REASON IN RELIGION. 



BT 



FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. 



"KEIXE VERTRATJTERE Gabe VERMAG DER Mensch DEM Me^schen 
ANZTJBIETEN ALS WAS ER EM iNSfERSTEN DES GEMUTHES ZJJ SICH SELBST 
GEREDET HA.T." 

Schleiermacher, 



BOSTON: 
WILLIAM V. SPENCER. 
18G7. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year I860, by 
WALKER, FULLER, AND COMPANY, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



Transfer 
Engineers School Li by. 
June 29,1931 



FOURTH EDITION. 



Cambridge: 
stereo t yp e d and printed ey john wilson and son. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

Chapter. Page. 

I. Being and Seeing 3 

EL "Natural and Spiritual" 21 

RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

Chapter. Page. 

L The Retreating God 35 

H The Advancing God 53 

HX The Regent God . . 71 

IV. The Answering God 85 

V. The Exorable God 99 

VL The Old Enigma 113 

VH. The Old Discord 129 

VHI. The Old Fear 145 

IX. The Old Hope 163 

X. Freedom in Bonds 181 

[iii] 



iv 



CONTENTS. 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 

Chapter. Page. 

Preliminary. — The Cause of Reason the 

Cause of Faith 197 

I. Culmination of Personality in the Christ 

of the Church 227 

IT. Limitation of Personality in the Christ of 

Reason 247 

HT. Miracles 263 

IY. The Revelation of the Spirit 283 

V. The Spirit in the Letter 301 

VI. Saving Faith 317 

\TL The Age of Grace; or, Atonement without 

Expiation 333 

VXIL The "Double Predestination " 349 

LX. The Christian Idea of Immortality . . . . 369 

X. Critique of Penal Theology . 387 

XL The Two Types . . 421 

XII. The Moral Ideal 441 



REASON IN RELIGION. 



I. 

BEING AND SEEING. 



INTRODUCTORY, 



L 

BEING AND SEEING. 

Philosophy has observed that human consciousness is 
most distinct on the surface of life, and grows dim and 
confused as it reaches toward the interior. The reason 
alleged is, that individuality, the subject of conscious- 
ness, is merely phenomenal ; and that, where the phe- 
nomenal ceases, individual existence is merged in the 
universal life. 

The fact is certain, the explanation questionable. I 
rather believe that individuality is real and radical, 
and that the limitation of consciousness on the inner 
side is due to the fact, that consciousness depends on 
external impressions : its condition is re-action on a 
world without ; it is the differentiation of self from all 
beside, and therefore loses its distinctness in propor- 
tion as all beside is withdrawn; that is, toward the 
interior of our being. 

There is, in all men, something deeper than them- 
selves, — than the conscious self of their experience. 
It is the elder, aboriginal self, which no consciousness 
can grasp. Who remembers the time when first he 

{31 



4 



INTRODUCTORY. 



began to say "I," and found himself a conscious unit, 
distinct from all others ? If we attempt to trace the 
history of the soul, its beginning is lost in a period of 
blank unconsciousness, beyond all scrutiny of memory 
or imagination. Blind mystery envelops our origin, 
as it does our end. Xo man quite possesses himself. 
The self which he seems to possess is growth from a 
root which bears him, not he it. % 

Springing from this unknown root, our being carries 
an unknown factor which modifies all its action. Our 
thinking, as well as our doing, obeys its influence. It 
is written, "As a man thinketh, so is he." We may 
reverse the proposition, and say with equal truth, "As 
a man is, so he thinketh." His thinking is the product 
of his being*; consequently, the gauge and exponent of 
his bein£\ It is his beino- translated into thought, — 
his being intellectually expressed. According as he is 
wise or foolish, his opinions will be true or false : they 
will be right or wrong according as he is good or 
evil. 

The character in religion determines the creed. 
Character has been defined "the educated will." But 
the will — the conscious, personal will — is not the 
only factor in this product : there is something in it of 
the radical self. And something of the radical self 
there is in every creed which is genuine, and not mere 
subscription to the placita of a Church. The true 
creed of a man is his character confessed. 

Or does any one suppose that belief is independent 
of character? — that a man can be one thing, and think 
another ? We sometimes talk as if truth were a secre- 



BEIXGr AND SEEING. 



5 



tion of the brain, entirely unaffected by moral condi- 
tions ; as if one could lay hold of spiritual truth, without 
spiritual insight, by mere dint of logic : or as if spir- 
itual insight were the product of some organic arrange- 
ment, mechanical in its operation, and quite as likely 
to o;o rio'ht with a vicious character as with a righteous 
one ; just as a watch may keep equally good time 
whether worn by a sinner or a saint. 

This I believe to be a very false view of the action 
of the mind in this relation. The intellect is nothing 
distinct from man. It is man himself in one of his 
functions. As the man, so the function, so the product 
of that function. As he is, so he thinketh. 

I say nothing of positive science. I do not deny 
that one who is morally depraved may be a good 
mathematician or a good physiologist. These are 
regions of truth beyond the jurisdiction of religion, and 
independent of moral conditions ; excepting always the 
general influence which character has on all the action 
of the mind. I am speaking of truth in morals and 
religion, when I say that the character determines the 
belief. Truth of spirit is essential to the right appre- 
hension of spiritual truth. To know the truth, it is 
necessary to will the truth, and to be the truth. 

This connection between being and seeing implies 
two things : 1st, A perverted nature cannot see the 
truth ; 2d, A (morally) sound nature, seeking without 
bias, will see the truth. 

1st, A perverted nature cannot see the truth. A 
man must be in harmony with it by moral and spiritual 
affinity, in order to apprehend it. There are facts which 
seem to contradict this proposition. It is notorious, 



6 



IXTEODUCTOEY. 



that very depraved men sometimes profess a very pure 
theology; at least, a very Orthodox one : whereas, ac- 
cording to this view, they ought to be infidels and 
atheists. I leave out of question the hypocrisy which 
consciously and deliberately assumes the disguise of 
religion to lull suspicion or to palliate crime. Such 
characters are not very common in our day, and are 
wholly foreign from our theme. I speak of bad men 
who actually receive, or think they receive, the religion 
they profess. 

But, observe, there is a wide difference between re- 
ception and conviction. Various degrees of persuasion 
are comprehended in the term "belief." Most of them 
stop short of genuine conviction. In fact, there are 
few, the world over, who can be said to have positive 
convictions in religion, if we understand by convictions 
the results of personal investigation or personal intui- 
tion. The religious tenets of most men are accidents ; 
that is, they are impressions derived from the ecclesias- 
tical atmosphere in which the holders of them happen 
to live. Or they are social conventions, adopted un- 
consciously, as it were by contagion. Or they are 
traditions inherited by education. A man is said to 
"believe" a doctrine imbibed in this way, although he 
has never come into real mental contact with it, — has 
never subjected it to the action of his own mind, — 
has never looked it fairly in the face. He is said to 
believe what he has never questioned. The fact is 
precisely the reverse. A man can never truly believe 
what he has not at some time questioned. In this 
sense of unquestioning reception, a very depraved man 
may hold very Orthodox opinions. Nay, the more de- 



BEING AND SEEING. 



7 



praved he is, the more tenacious of such opinions he is 
likely to be ; the more zealous in defence of the Ortho- 
doxy in which he was bred ; the more disposed to annex 
to it an outlying Orthodoxy exceeding that in which he 
was bred, and to clothe himself in extra folds of rigor- 
ous doctrine; actuated, it would seem, by the notion 
that a rigorous creed atones for a vicious life. For the 
Protestant world inherits from the Church of Rome 
the idea, that God is pleased with Orthodoxy, and that 
every article which a man adds to his creed, so it have 
the sanction of the Church, is a step toward heaven. 

It is nothing uncommon for very unscrupulous peo- 
ple — tradesmen of doubtful integrity, intriguing poli- 
ticians, unprincipled men in public life and in private — 
to maintain with earnestness a stringent Orthodoxv. 
Not from hypocrisy, not with any intent to deceive ; 
but partly in the hope of being justified by their belief, 
and partly in order to atone to themselves for conscious 
depravity. They would balance laxity in practice with 
severity in doctrine, and thus maintain a moral equili- 
brium in their life. It is the same principle which led 
the gay women of the court of Louis XIV. to become 
devotees with advancing years ; putting on " the orna- 
ment of a meek and quiet spirit" as outward charms 
decayed, and replacing the varnished attractions of 
personal beauty with the still available " beauty of holi- 
ness." It is the same principle which leads worldly 
men and women, in later time, to seek refuge in the 
bosom of Romanism and to expiate a reckless life by 
religious austerity. 

In such cases, there is no genuine conviction; no 
true interior knowledge, but mere profession. It may 



8 



INTKODUCTOKY. 



be sincere, so far as intention goes, but based on no 
actual personal experience of the truth. Only they 
have sight of spiritual verities, who arrive at them 
through spiritual experience. Only the true soul can 
know the truth. 

2d, A sound nature, seeking without bias, will see 
the truth. 

Here, again, we encounter a fact which seems to 
contradict the supposed connection between the intel- 
lectual and the moral in man, between character and 
creed. There are cases of men of pure character 
and blameless life, who have been infidels in religion. 
If it be true that the character determines the belief, it 
would seem that every pure and honest mind must 
receive, if not the doctrine of the gospel, at least the 
essential truths of universal religion ; and that all who 
reject these must be morally depraved. But such is 
not the fact. At least, there are many and significant 
exceptions. Epicurus, the arch-atheist of antiquity, is 
said to have lived a blameless and beneficent life at the 
head of a company of friends who professed to seek 
private satisfaction as the sure and only good. Spinoza, 
who is usually regarded as the arch-atheist of modern 
time, is allowed by his bitter opponent, the unscrupu- 
lous Bayle, to have been upright, kind, and strictly 
moral ; which, says he, " may seem strange, but, in 
reality, ought not to surprise us any more than that 
men who believe in the truth of the gospel should lead 
an irregular life." Hume, the inveterate sceptic of 
English philosophy, is characterized by Adam Smith aa 
generous, charitable, and urbane. Shelley, the zealous 



BEIXGr AND SEEING. 



9 



antagonist of Christian Orthodoxy, seems to have been 
possessed with the purest spirit of Christian love. How 
shall we explain such cases, in which it would appear 
that pure minds and sound natures had no perception 
of the truth ? 

— — It must be remembered, that what we know of these 
men, for the most part, is not their belief, but their 
negations. We see that they reject the established re- 
ligion as a whole : we da not always see what equiva- 
lent they received in its place. But we know, from the 
nature of the human mind, that some equivalent they 
must have had ; some secret convictions ; some spiritual 
insight ; something in the nature of religious faith, 
however imperfect and ill-defined. For man is not so 
constituted as to do without faith. These unbelievers 
have been repelled by some apparent absurdity, or 
some revolting impiety, in the popular creed. In war- 
ring against that, by a natural tendency of the human 
mind, they have been led to reject the entire system of 
religious belief of which it seemed to be a necessary 
part. Or perhaps it is the form in which the popular 
conception, or a false philosophy, has clothed the doc- 
trines of religion, that they reject ; and, rejecting that, 
they appear to reject the essential truth so embodied. 
Be this as it may, where the life is pure it is so through 
belief, and not through unbelief ; through the influence 
of truth, and not through falsity or error. If the life of 
these unbelievers was true, some true perception must 
have sprung from it, some religious conviction must 
have accompanied it. Is there a reputed atheist whose 
heart is true and whose life is righteous ? I say that 
man believes in God, in a spiritual centre, however his 



10 



INTRODUCTORY. 



conception of divine wisdom and love may differ from 
the popular conception, or the theological dogma which 
bears that name. He believes in a moral law, and a 
necessary and everlasting distinction between right and 
wrong, however his standard of moral obligation may 
clash, in some particulars, with the commonly received 
ecclesiastical code. He believes in an Infinite Good, 
in eternal spiritual realities, however he may dissent 
from the popular view of the life to come. 

Hear the confession of one who was counted an 
atheist in his time, and is still so regarded by most 
theologians : "Experience had taught me," says Spinoza, 
w that all which life commonly offers is worthless and 
vain. I therefore determined to know if there were 
any genuine good which might be attained, and with 
which the soul, abandoning every thing else, might be 
content ; the discovery and appropriation of which 
would yield a continual and supreme satisfaction. 
That which mankind, if we judge from their actions, 
regard as the highest good, is either wealth, honor, or 
sensual enjoyment. The pleasure derived from these is 
delusive, and only an infinite and everlasting good can 
impart pure joy to the soul. Therefore I resolved to 
collect myself, that I might lay hold of this supreme 
good." And what was the supreme good in his appre- 
hension? "The supreme good," he continues, "con- 
sists in becoming partaker of a more excellent nature, 
and in realizing the intimate relation which connects the 
individual soul with the universe of things." 

And so this remarkable man, a Jew by birth, but 
excommunicated from the Jewish synagogue for his 
opinions, lived a life of strict seclusion, devoting him- 



BEING AND SEEING. 



11 



self to meditation and inquiry concerning the deepest 
mystery of things, refusing lucrative offices which were 
tendered to him, and maintaining his frugal existence 
by mechanical labor. 

Thus we see that the nominal unbeliever may cherish 
in his heart a sublime faith which explains the moral 
anomaly of his life. But we deceive ourselves, if we 
suppose that such cases are frequent ; and that even 
this negative purity of life (for usually it amounts to 
nothing more) is a common accompaniment of what is 
called infidelity. Such combinations are exceptions, 
not the rule. If we search for the saints of history, — - 
for the moral heroes, the men and the women who stand 
pre-eminent in moral excellence, choice examples of 
heroic virtue, — we find them, not in the ranks of unbe- 
lief, but among the disciples and among the confessors 
of a given religion. 

If speculative unbelief is sometimes associated with 
purity of life, practical unbelief, on the other hand, 
is inseparably connected with moral corruption. By 
practical unbelief, I mean inward aversion ; alienation 
of the heart from spiritual truths which, however, may 
not be contradicted by the understanding, and which 
are outwardly acknowledged by formal compliance with 
the uses of the Church. I have spoken of depraved 
men who seek to atone for their vices by their Or- 
thodoxy. There are men who are not depraved in 
that sense of the term ; who are guilty of no misde- 
meanors ; whose life is regular, their manners irre- 
proachable ; but whose hearts are selfish and filled 
with vicious affections, — envy, hatred, and lust; — 
there are such, I say, who formally assent to the 



INTRODUCTORY. 



truths of religion; who never entertained a speculative 
doubt ; who never dreamed of questioning the creed of 
their communion ; who deem such questioning impious, 
and burn with righteous indignation against all who so 
question, all so-called infidels ; but who no more be- 
lieve in that creed with a genuine appreciative faith 
than they believe in Brahmanism. Their theological 
creed is one thing ; their practical belief, another and a 
very different thing. Ecclesiastically, they subscribe 
to the Athanasian Creed, or the Apostles' Creed, or the 
Thirty-nine Articles, or the Westminster Catechism; 
but, if they would confess the secret conviction of their 
hearts, their creed would be, "I believe in one supreme 
and all-sufficient good,— the good of riches, the good 
of honor, the good of enjoyment. These three are 
one good; the same in substance, equal in value 
and satisfaction. I believe that the chief end of man 
is to get gain and lay up much good for many 
years. I believe that religion is the necessary safe- 
guard of life and property, and must be maintained 
with strict conformity and punctual observance. I 
Tbelieve in success. I believe in respectability. I be- 
lieve that the respectable are the children of God and 
shall inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the 
foundation of the world ; but the needy and the vaga- 
bond, the profane rabble, shall be cast into outer dark- 
ness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth." 

It is commonly supposed, that the understanding is 
competent, in and of itself, with no aid but its own 
inductions, and no method but its own law, to discover 
and establish the truths of religion. This supposition 



BEIXG AND SEEING. 



13 



is contradicted by the history both of science and re- 
ligion. The understanding possesses no such capacity ; 
otherwise, the truths of religion would long since have 
ceased to be matters of debate. What the understand- 
ing is competent to decide, it does decide beyond the 
possibility of question. If by its own methods, in its 
own right, it could decide these questions, there would 
be no more difference of opinion concerning them than 
there is concerning the properties of a circle or a trian- 
gle. There are no open questions in mathematics. 
There is but one theory in astronomy, in mechanics, in 
any department of inquiry of which the understanding 
is an adequate judge. Accordingly, recent philosophers 
have excluded from their survey of human knowledge 
all ideas of God and spirit, — whatever transcends the 
facts of sense and the methods of the understanding, as 
without the pale of legitimate inquiry. To all the 
revelations of faith and feeling they oppose their so- 
called "positive philosophy." 

The truths of religion are not discovered by the 
understanding : they are not laid hold of by scientific 
inquiry. The understanding has no God, no spiritual 
high calling, no immortal destination. Whoever would 
know of these things must arrive at them by a different 
way: he must follow the dictates of faith; he must 
obey the law written in the heart ; he must live in them 
and for them. To the mere understanding, the world 
is as intelligible and as satisfactory without a God as 
with one. If the only use of belief in a God were to 
furnish a theory of the material universe, to account for 
the origin of things, — bv means of a "First Cause" 
and a supermundane, creative Power to aid the under- 



14 



INTRODUCTORY. 



standing in the solution of its problems, — humanity 
could do without this idea, which, after all, does not 
solve the problem of existence to the intellect, but only 
replaces it by a new one, and gives us, instead of an 
inexplicable world, a more inexplicable God. If the 
understanding were the only or principal source and 
organ of truth, mankind would have lived to this day 
without God in the world, and would never have felt 
the want of the Being whom we so name ; would never 
have felt the inadequacy of a world without a God. 
But there are other faculties and functions in man ; 
other sources of perception and conviction than the 
understanding : and other necessities and cravings than 
those which the understanding can supply. There are 
moral and spiritual sentiments and aspirations, — the 
sense of duty, of moral obligation and accountableness ; 
the longing of the soul for an infinite good ; the loyalty 
of the affections to an invisible Supreme ; faith, devo- 
tion, hope. These demand a God and providence and 
grace, a spiritual world, and everlasting life. 

The greatest philosopher of the last century em- 
ployed the penetrating analysis of the keenest powers 
that ever dealt with metaphysical problems, in a critical 
examination of human ideas and belief, with a view to 
ascertain what portion of our supposed knowledge could 
be absolutely legitimated by scientific demonstration. 
He could find no logical foundation, no critical author- 
ity, for those ideas with which religion is conversant, — 
the sublimest convictions of the human mind, — God, 
infinity, eternity. And he wrote a book, in which he 
denied to these ideas any basis in pure reason, any 
scientific value. But our philosopher was too wise not 



BEING AND SEEING. 



15 



to perceive, that convictions so deeply rooted, so univer- 
sally diffused, so inseparable from human nature, could 
not be mere illusions, but must have some other basis 
besides tradition and popular prejudice. He saw that 
man needed a God, and he saw that the need implied 
the reality. He therefore applied his analysis next 
to the moral and practical part of man's nature ; and he 
found the ideas of God and eternity to be legitimate 
inductions of the moral sense, truths logically resulting 
from the feeling of moral obligation, — the law written 
in the heart. " That law, he concluded, must have a 
lawgiver; that obligation, a sanction; that conscious- 
ness, an object : there must be a God to answer these 
conditions, to explain the facts of the soul. And he 
wrote another book, affirming, as truths of practical 
reason, what the speculative reason had denied. 

That part of man's nature which science calls into 
action is not the whole man. Spiritually, intellectually 
even, it is a very small part of us, and however re- 
spectable, however wonderful in its capacity, is com- 
paratively limited and transient in its application. A 
man may be very able and very eminent as a scientist, 
immensely learned, astonishingly acute; and yet be a 
poor creature tried by the true criterion and highest 
standard of humanity. He may be a mere child in 
spiritual attainments and spiritual insight ; a stranger to 
all the deeper experiences of the soul ; morally meagre, 
lank, hungry, destitute. With great activity of brain, 
there may be an utter want of interior life. 

Far be it from me to undervalue the work of the 
understanding, or to speak disparagingly of the scien- 
tific mind in its own legitimate province and function, 



16 



INTRODUCTORY. 



or to cast contempt on scientific pursuits. Who can 
help revering the power which possesses and rules this 
world of ours like a second terrestrial god, — that power 
to which Nature, in all her realms, is subject and 
tributary ; to which the deeps below and the deeps 
above yield up their secrets ; which makes to itself eyes, 
that, transcending the limits of natural vision, discover 
new worlds in the heavenly spaces, millions of miles 
removed, or detect them near by, in a globule of water 
or a grain of sand ; — the speculative faculty which 
methodizes the heavens with its unerring calculus, and 
predicts the position of a planet in some far-removed 
time ; — * the practical faculty which utilizes the waste of 
Nature ; which harnesses the idle vapor to the axle of a 
carriage, or chains it to the oars of a ship, and traverses 
earth and ocean by aid of this ethereal agent ; which 
converses with distant lands in electric whispers of 
instantaneous communication ; which disarms the sur- 
geon's lancet of its terrors, and transmutes the agonies 
of the flesh into tranquil dreams ? Who can help ad- 
miring these things and triumphing in these triumphs ? 

Nevertheless, .this power which spans the heavens 
and subdues the earth has no interest or part in the 
highest objects of human life and the noblest aspira- 
tions of the human soul. It has no experience and no 
vision and no surmise of the real and eternal. The 
devout heart is conscious of a higher calling and wor- 
thier aims than the scientific mind ; and many an un- 
learned but faithful doer of God's will converses with 
sublimer topics than " star - eyed science 99 has ever 
scanned. To science belongs the material universe, 
with its heights and its deeps, its earths and its suns, 



BEING AND SEEING. 



17 



its stuffs and its shows. Still, the material universe is 
but a sprinkling of dust upon the spiritual All which 
encloses it ; at best, a transient vision, a temporary 
showing of God to the finite mind. It had a begin- 
ning, it will have an end ; and the science which ex- 
plores it must share with it its date and its doom. But 
faith and duty have the spiritual and real, — absolute 
Being, for their sphere and portion. The knowledge 
which they acquire is not relative and accidental, but 
essential and unchangeable; for, in it, Being and 
Knowing are one. 



n. 

"NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 



II, 



NATURAL AND SPIRITUA 



"There are not two worlds, but one and the same, embracing' all, even 
that which vulgar thought conceives as opposite, — Xature and Spirit." 

SCHELLI^Gc 



The popular religion is Manichean, It is so not only 
in its pneuruatology, where it has the warrant of its 
sacred books, but also in its ontology, where it has no 
such warrant. It assumes, in the current antithesis of 
Nature and Spirit, a duality of which its scripture 
knows nothing.* The doctrine crept into the Church 
from an extra Christian source, and belongs to another 
system. A distinction is recognized by philosophy, 
ancient and modern, between soul and spirit, The 
soul is common to man with the brute ; the spirit is 
that which distinguishes him from other animals. This 
distinction, in the hands of theologians, became oppug- 
nance : a difference of decree became battle-array of 
hostile forces. Instead of "natural" and "supernatural," 
the two were conceiyed as natural and contranatural. 

* St. Paul distinguishes between animal and spiritual, — to ibvxi<x-6v and 
to nvev/tariKov. Our version improperly renders the former term li natural." 
Hence the popular dualism. There is nothing of this dualism in the doc- 
trine of Christ, who so penetrated what we call Xature with his spiritual 
vision as to see only spirit there, and who was so domesticated in what we 
call the spiritual world, that to him it was as natural as earth and sky. 

[21] 



22 



INTRODUCTORY . 



Nature was put in antagonism with spirit, that is, with 
God ; and St. Augustine, who did more than any other 
to mould the anthropology of the Christian Church, 
and who never outgrew his Manichean antecedents, 
taught that all which is good in man is contrary to 
nature, and that all which is natural in man is Satanic ; 
making the human a mere arena for the demonstration 
of hellish and divine powers. 

So ingrained in the language of religion is this dual- 
ism, that the popular theology is ineradicably infected, 
the popular mind irrecoverably bewildered, by it. 
Writers in defence of Christianity declare it to be 
" against the grain of human nature," and fancy that 
they exalt it by this declaration. What could infidel 
say more damaging to the cause of Christian truth ? 

As a classification of the facts of life whereby one 
class of phenomena and functions is distinguished from 
another, the antithesis of natural and spiritual, although 
inadequate, might pass as loose phraseology. But to 
make of the rhetorical antithesis an ontological antao;- 
onism, to say that nature and spirit are mutually 
oppugnant, is to put contradiction in the Godhead ; or, 
what is the same thing, to affirm two Gods. 

What we mean by nature, when we speak of it as an 
active power, is God. And " that which is natural," — 
vegetable and animal, day and night, summer and 
winter, growth and decay, — are divine operations, 
processes ordained and conducted by God. And, what 
we mean by spirit, — is it not the same God? And 
"that which is spiritual," — truth and goodness, conver- 
sion, grace, — are these not also divine operations, pro- 
cesses, acts? Are they not also of the very God who 



"natural and spiritual." 



23 



made day and night, and the earth and the stars? 
Further than this we cannot go. We have no experi- 
ence and no revelation which reaches behind the pheno- 
mena ; no revelation other than that of the one Creator 
and Spirit. We only know that all phenomena have 
one origin at last ; that the same all-present and all- 
teeming Power works equally in the soul and in the 
sod, is manifest, however diversely, in the life of a saint 
and the life of a plant ; that the God who makes grass 
to grow in the field makes love and goodness to spring 
in the heart ; that the Father of spirits is the sparrow's 
Father too, and the Father of the lilies of the field; 
that the sovereign Will, which, in one of its aspects, 
we term the law of gravitation, in another is the law 
of duty which impels the Christian and the Christ. 

Nature and spirit are not opposite, but one ; related 
to each other as genus and species, or as parts of one 
whole ; the same arch-power in different characters 
and functions. It matters little how we theorize about 
them, so long as we acknowledge in nature and spirit a 
common fountain and a radical affinity thence arising. 
We may call nature unconscious spirit, and spirit con- 
scious nature ; or we may regard them as parallel inde- 
pendent manifestations. However we may speculate, 
the essential fact remains. Both meet in one source ; 
both reflect one image. All that is natural is spiritual 
M in its ascent and cause ; " all that is spiritual is natural 
"in its descent and being." 

If for "natural" we substitute "material," we have, 
it might seem, a more legitimate antithesis. But, even 
then, the terms should be conceived as expressing 
different stages of being, not contrary powers. Matter 



24 



INTRODUCTORY. 



is nature at rest ; spirit is nature in action. Through- 
out nature, there is a tendency and an effort to become 
spirit, a struggling-up into liberty and consciousness. 
From shapeless masses to the salient crystal, the be- 
ginning of intelligible form ; to the growing plant, the 
beginning of organism; to the sentient animal, the first 
revelation of conscious soul ; to rational man, the highest 
and last revelation of spirit ; — the progress is still from 
stage to stage of natural life. We say of the plant, it 
lives. Previous to that, through all the stages of the 
mineral kingdom, — earths, metals, jewels, — Nature 
had slept. But now, with the plant, she awakes from 
her torpor, and looks about her. From the dark bosom 
of insensate matter emerges a soul. Intelligence looks 
out from the full-blown flower ; instinct shows itself in 
the natural adaptation of the seed to the soil. With 
the brute creation, nature attains a higher level, — 
becomes more active and free. Deeper instincts, sen- 
sation, affection, begin to appear. Then finally, in 
man, the same nature appears as spirit : it becomes 
reflective, self-conscious, moral. The sense of obliga- 
tion, aspiration, reverence, charity, faith, devotion, are 
its finished fruits. 

In this progressive unfolding of itself from what we 
call matter to what we call spirit, nature does not cease 
to be nature as it rises and ripens. The flower is not 
less natural than the earth from which it springs ; the 
animal, not less natural than the plant ; and the perfect 
man with all his aspirations and his virtues, the pro- 
phet, the saint, is not less natural, but more so, than 
plant and brute ; more natural because more developed 
and complete. 



"natural and spiritual." 



25 



And now, within the region of the human, what do 
we mean, what can we mean, by the " natural" and the 
"spiritual" man? I say, the natural and the spiritual 
man are the same man in different manifestations and 
stages of growth. They differ from each other as the 
garden-plant differs from the same plant in its native 
state. We say of fruits and flowers which derive their 
character from the culture bestowed upon them and 
without that culture could not be what they are, - — we 
say they are not natural but artificial products. In 
one sense, we are right : they are not original nature. 
And yet they are natural. For "nature is made better 
by no means, but nature makes that means." The 
very culture bestowed on flower and fruit is an opera- 
tion of nature. In all that he does in the way of culti- 
vation, man employs the aid of natural agents and 
laws. Whatever he produces, therefore, is a product 
of nature. So, too, the spiritual — our virtue, our 
religion — is, in this sense, a natural product. As the 
plant is created a flower-and-fruit-bearing creature, so 
man is created a moral and religious creature : he has a 
capacity of moral and religious life, as the plant has 
a capacity of floral and pomal life. In either case, 
culture is required to bring out that capacity; and 
whatever that culture produces is natural. No measure 
of holiness, no work of grace, can exceed nature. 
Whatever height of goodness the saint may attain in 
his upward progress, he can arrive at nothing of which 
the germ and the promise were not laid in his constitu- 
tion. He can arrive at nothing that is not natural. 

This view does not overlook the immediate action of 
Deity on the soul. It does not overlook or deny what 



26 



INTRODUCTORY. 



is technically called the operation of divine grace. 
Whoever believes in God as a present, immanent, 
diffusive Power, not as an isolated, incommunicable 
individuality, will recognize a divine agency in those 
influences which regenerate human nature, renewing 
the selfish, earth-bound soul, and establishing the em- 
pire of truth and goodness in man's will and life. All 
such influences are God working in us to will and to 
do. To question a divine agency in the education, or 
in the conversion and renewing, of the human soul, is 
to question a fact to which the consciousness of every 
Christian man or woman will bear witness. But what 
right have we to say that there is any thing unnatural 
in this kind of influence, — any thing which distinguishes 
it from other divine operations, except the direction 
which it takes, and the consequences in which it re- 
sults ? What process or product of nature is there in 
w^hich the agency of the same God is not concerned? 
Not to speak of great things, of suns and systems, and 
the earth with its seasons, take the humblest product 
of a summer's growth ; take the berry by the wayside, 
the clover in the field. These creatures exhibit the 
immediate action of God in every period and circum- 
stance of their being. The juices of the earth, the 
beams of the sun, the summer showers which conspire 
to unfold their little life, which round their bodies and 
paint their cheeks and put sweetness in all their cells, 
— what are these but so many agencies and aspects 
and acts of the universal Being who is equally present 
and equally active and equally perfect in the clover and 
the berry, and the soul of man? If, then, Divinity is 
required to call forth and perfect the produce of the 



"natural axd spiritual." 



27 



field, which to-day is, and to-morrow passes away, how 
much more is such agency required to unfold the moral 
life which never dies ? We may call this agency in the 
one case a process of nature ; in the other, an operation 
of the spirit : but these phrases do not alter the identity 
of the agent- Because the effects are different, is it not 
therefore the same God? "There are diversities of 
operations ; but it is the same God who worketh all in 
all." 

A process of nature is also a work of grace, and a 
work of grace is also a process of nature. We no 
more degrade the agency in the one case by giving it 
that name, than we exaggerate it in the other. What 
but a miracle of grace is each returning spring, unlock- 
ing myriad doors of life, flooding the landscape with 
glory and joy, everywhere bursting into flower and 
song, evangelizing the new-born earth with summer 
beauty and harvest hopes ? The heart is not satisfied 
with ascribing all this to the different position of the 
sun in the ecliptic, and the action of cold mechanical 
laws. Piety sees here the immediate presence and 
grace of God; and long ago, before the revelation in 
Jesus Christ, had learned and sung the great truth, 
K Thou sendest forth thy spirit ; they are created : thou 
renewest the face of the earth." And so, on the other 
side of the antithesis, the purest manifestations of 
divine grace do not disdain to exhibit themselves in 
natural processes ; and, even of him whose life was the 
advent of grace and truth on the earth, it is written, 
that "the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit," and 
"increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with 
God and man." The operation of God's spirit in the 



28 



INTRODUCTORY. 



regeneration of a human heart but unfolds a life-germ 
inborn in that heart, and is therefore a natural process, 
as much so as the growth of an apple or an apple-tree. 
The tree may never bear, and man's spiritual life may 
never mature ; but there it is : there' is the faculty, 
there is the root. Whatever springs from that faculty 
and that root is a natural product. 

This view is something more than philosophic specu- 
lation : it is theologically and practically important in 
its bearings on human duty and destiny. If we say 
that natural and spiritual are contrary and incompati- 
ble, we affirm that religion is unnatural, contranatural ; 
that man must become denaturalized, must become 
inhuman, before he can become religious, — before he 
can lead a religious life. And this, I grieve to say, is 
virtually the doctrine of a large portion of the Christian 
world. The doctrine taught by Augustine, and revived 
by Calvin, is, that human nature, as such, is adverse 
to religion ; that Christianity and human nature are 
related to each other, not merely as root and fruit, or as 
stock and graft, but as fire and water, or as heaven 
and hell. Human nature, as such, according to this 
doctrine, is incapable of holiness : nature must be 
supplanted by grace. Until that revolution is accom- 
plished, all that man does, however angelic in appear- 
ance, is sinful and devilish ; and, after that change has 
taken place, the righteousness that follows is no product 
of human nature, but grace excluding human nature, 
and acting in its stead. All this has been inferred 
from that saying of St. Paul, — or been thought to be 
sanctioned by that saying, — " The natural man re- 
ceiveth not the things of the spirit of God." I cannot 



"natural and spiritual 



29 



so interpret the apostle's language. For "natural" let 
us say " animal ; 99 and the real meaning will be found 
to be this, — Man, as an animal, with only so much of 
mental life developed in him as belongs to his sphere in 
the animal scale, cannot receive the truths of the gos- 
pel : he cannot be a Christian. A further development 
is needed for that. Even as animal, man develops a 
certain degree of mental or spiritual life : he is capable 
of society and civil government, but not of religion, 
not of conscious communion with God, not of worship- 
ping in spirit and truth. To attain that is the new 
birth by which man becomes what Paul calls " spir- 
itual," as distinguished from animal. One is repre- 
sented by Adam ; the other, by Christ. But both are 
one and the same man,- — the same human nature in 
different stages of development. First that which is 
animal ; then that which is spiritual. 

Human nature, as such, is not hostile to religion ; 
but a hostile principle, as we all know, may spring up 
in it. There is a possible adversary in human nature 
as well as a "Lord from heaven." In man, as we find 
him, for the most part, there are opposite tendencies : 
a principle of self and a principle of love ; an upward 
and a downward tendency. But both of these tenden- 
cies are equally natural : the one is as proper to man as 
the other. Both are constituent elements of humanity. 
Man's calling is to subdue the one, and unfold the 
other. 

Here, then, is the true antagonism. Not nature and 
spirit are contrary, but the worldly (or carnal) and the 
heavenly mind. " The carnal mind," it is written, " is 
enmity against God." Yet even here we have to dis- 



30 



INTRODUCTORY. 



tinguish between the carnal mind in its proper essence, 
and those to whom that mind maybe ascribed, — be- 
tween worldliness intrinsically considered, and worldly 
men. It is my belief, that worldliness is seldom so 
predominant as utterly to extinguish the moral and 
religious life. The most worldly-minded have some 
religious experiences ; some aspirations, some gropings, 
at least, sufficient to attest the fellowship of the Spirit, 
though not sufficient to regenerate the life. Could you 
look into the heart's recesses of this unregenerate world- 
ling ; this eager, driving man of business, to whom, 
if you speak of the " highest interest," he straightway 
thinks of his ten per cent; of this hack -politician, 
who trades in principles, and would sell his country for 
some paltry office in the gift of Government : of this 
bloated sensualist, whose face is a record of no spiritual 
experiences, but of spirituous draughts and unctuous 
repasts, — could you penetrate the interior of such 
characters, you would find, that, even there, in those 
wastes and deserts of the soul, the Holy Spirit is not 
quite extinct ; you would find even there some faint 
flicker of the everlasting Light, feeble though it be 
as the last gleam of departing day on some desolate 
crag;, which reddens without reclaiming; its ungracious 
barrenness. I have seen in Catholic lands a wayside 
chapel which seemed to be divested of all sacred asso- 
ciations, — exposed as it was to public desecration, and 
covered with the dust of daily travel ; but, entering, 
I found, in a quiet niche, a votive lamp, which the piety 
of another generation had kindled, and which the pres- 
ent generation would not suffer to go out. And I 
thought, how many a man of affairs, who stands in the 



"natural and spiritual." 



31 



thick of public life, and is well-nigh smothered with 
the dust of the world, may have in his heart some quiet 
corner where the lamp of life which a pious mother 
once kindled there burns feebly indeed, but still burns, 
and may, by God's grace, flame forth one day into fer- 
vent devotion ! 

The worldly mind, in its proper essence, is enmity 
against God ; but men of the world are not all worldly. 
The deepest tendency of every being is Godward ; and 
when all the layers of life are removed, and all other 
images erased from the heart, the image of God will be 
found there, inwrought and indelible. And when all 
the experiments of life have been tried, and all other 
satisfactions exhausted, the heart will still thirst for 
w the living God" with longings insatiable. 



BOOK FIEST. 

jjU%toti hrifjnit % §0imtrs of Clxeism. 

I. 

THE RETREATING GOD. 



BOOK FIRST. 



I. 

THE EETKEATING GOD. 

The eldest of religious ideas remains to this day the 
most indemonstrable, the most undefinahle. For un- 
known ages, religion has said " God" with intense con- 
viction of some arch-reality answering to that term, 
and has wondered and trembled and triumphed in the 
contemplation of that reality ; yet science, at this mo- 
ment, is no nearer the truth of that idea, no better 
prepared to affirm it on independent grounds, no more 
ready to say " God " from any discovery or experience 
of its own, than when it first opened the book of Na- 
ture. In that book, as leaf after leaf was turned over, 
Science found order, law, intelligent method, beneficent 
arrangement ; but a Being distinct from nature, in 
whom those qualities inhere, it found not, and cannot 
find by its own legitimate methods. 

Attempts have been made to prove the existence of 
God from nature. Whatever apparent success has at- 
tended such efforts is due to an antecedent faith already 
possessed of the God w^hom it sought. The first glance 
at nature reveals him to faith ; the most intimate ac- 

[35] 



36 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



quaintance with nature will not reveal him to science. 
There is no way to God through the understanding, 
which knows only to arrange and elaborate what the 
senses supply. He who, by the very hypothesis of his 
being, underlies both the senses and the understanding, 
and is himself the light by which they see, must needs 
be inscrutable to both. He eludes investigation, not 
by foreignness and distance, but by intimate nearness. 
No candle can show us the daylight ; we cannot go 
behind our own consciousness ; we cannot see behind 
our eyes. " I am nearer to thee," he says in the Per- 
sian oracle, "than thou art to thyself." — "The roads 
leading to God are more in number than the breathings 
of created beings. . . . The eyes of purity see him, 
and the lustre of his substance ; but dark and astounded 
is he who hath sought him by efforts of the understand- 
ing." Hussein was asked the way to God. "With- 
draw both feet, and thou art with him, — one from this 
world, the other from the world to come." 

When we say he is inscrutable, it is not in the sense 
of latency, as a jewel of the mine is inscrutable, but in 
the sense of reconditeness, as light and life are inscru- 
table, which yet are the most patent of sensible facts. 
Our knowledge of God is constituted by faith and con- 
scious experience. If we attempt to verify that knowl- 
edge by demonstration, it disappears. The moment 
we approach God with scientific tests, "he hideth him- 
self." And his hiding is his own transcendent light. 
As science advances, God retires from the commerce 
of the understanding into mystery more and more im- 
penetrable. Do we seek him in the realms of space? 
Science rebukes that quest as preposterous. How can 



THE RETREATING GOD. 



37 



he be nearer to one point of space than another, of 
whose idea omnipresence is a prime constituent ? TYliat 
lurking-place, what local retreat, what private chamber 
in the heights or the deeps, can we assign to God? 
With powers of perception that could look creation 
through, we should come no nearer the secret of his 
presence. We need not be told that the fancied throne 
above the heavens, which figures in the poetry of an- 
cient devotion, is a crude and childish conceit ; but, 
for scientific purposes, what does it avail to take up 
the word of philosophy and talk of the one sole Sub- 
stance, the all - animating Life? The being of God 
is brought no nearer by such phraseology. For who, 
in any creature, can detect the final secret of its 
life, or discover by analysis any thing more essential 
and divine than life itself, as it passes before our eyes ? 
No experiment will disclose the root and substance by 
which an object subsists. Science explores the secrets 
of nature, and hopes, by removing veil after veil of 
material form, to come upon the innermost hidden life, 
— the soul or substance which those veils conceal, — to 
reach the radical essence of things. But science finds 
only qualities, — form, color, size: the substance in 
which those qualities inhere is undiscoverable. The 
most powerful microscope, the most active chemistry, 
detects only qualities. Science, through all eternity, 
will discover nothing else. 

If, on the other hand, we say, as Jesus taught us, 
K God is a spirit," we have the statement which best 
satisfies rational faith, but not one which serves any 
better as a demonstration of God to the understanding. 
All that the understanding can know of spirit is nega- 



38 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

tive ; that it is not body, and has none of the properties 
of body, — no parts nor form nor color, density or 
weight. The'thing itself which we designate as spirit, 
in its positive essence, is unknown, is inconceivable. 

In whatever way, by whatsoever terms, we state our 
idea of the being of God, the substance of that being 
for ever eludes, not only the test of scientific inquiry, 
but all intellectual conception. As substance, God is 
not only inscrutable, but inconceivable. 

Is he, then, more apparent, or more traceable, as 
agent and cause ? Do we seek him, in that capacity, 
in the processes of nature? We find there only our 
own inferences, — confirmations of a preconceived idea. 
We see what we call design, adaptation of means to 
ends, which proves intelligence. But intelligence in 
nature is one, and the God of religion is another. It 
is not logic, but faith, that builds the inferential bridge 
between the two. I said science is no nearer to God, 
no more apprehensive of the truth of that idea, now, 
than when the study of nature commenced. I might 
rather say, that science is further estranged from that 
idea, less cognizant of the being of God, less ready to 
affirm him, now than then. Science hides the agency 
of God in a multitude of secondary agents, which mul- 
tiply the more, the more we become acquainted with the 
constitution of things. In the infancy of knowledge, 
every tiling was referred directly to God as the sole and 
immediate cause of every existence and every event. If 
a nation was visited with pestilence or blight, it was the 
Lord that sent them ; and there ended the inquiry. 
There was nothing more to be said on the subject. If 
a comet or eclipse appeared in the heavens, they were 



THE RETREATING GOD. 



39 



quite spontaneous occurrences, with no antecedent but 
the arbitrary will of God. Every blessing and success 
was a special providence, entirely aside of the necessary 
sequence of events. In the progress of intellectual 
culture, it has come to be understood that every event 
has its necessary antecedent in time, and forms a neces- 
sary link in a chain of events which extends indefinitely 
before and after, beyond the knowledge and surmise of 
man. Every effect which we witness or experience in 
nature or ourselves has its necessary cause in some- 
thing that went before ; is itself the cause of something 
that is to come ; is part of a process of which no man 
knows the beginning or the end. In the view of faith, 
the one divine Cause, the immediate will of God, is 
present and active at every stage of this process, — 
is the real agent by which that effect was produced. 
In the view of faith, there is but one Cause : those 
which we call secondary causes are no causes at all, 
but only accompanying conditions. But this is not the 
aspect which the facts present to science, holding by 
visible agents, investigating natural laws, and tracing 
the necessary operation of cause and effect in the 
natural world. Where science finds an invariable 
connection between certain antecedents and certain con- 
sequents, where it finds that, one particular thing 
preceding, another particular thing invariably follows, 
it affirms the former to be the origin or cause of the 
latter. 

Thus, without any conscious atheistic design, it is 
the tendency of science to put God out of view. Sci- 
ence does not formally deny the agency of God ; but it 
is not the business of science to take knowledge of it. 



40 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



On the contrary, its business is, if possible, to get on 
without it ; i.e., to discover for every phenomenon in 
nature some natural, finite, intelligible agent, without 
resorting to the supernatural. A resort to the super- 
natural is a confession of ignorance which it is the in- 
terest and business of science, so long as possible, to 
avoid. In other words, it is the interest of science, so 
far as possible, to banish the supernatural ; that is, to 
banish God from the actual world. This is not said in 
disparagement of scientific men, who are often devout 
believers. And surely no class of men have greater 
reason to be so ! They may heartily believe in God ; 
they may acknowledge his agency in nature ; they may 
acknowledge all nature to be his work and method and 
manifestation : but this acknowledgment is out of 
school. As scientific investigators, it is their business 
to find natural causes for every fact and event ; to 
supplant the supernatural, so far as possible, with 
known, appreciable, natural agents. Where religion 
says " creation," science says " development. " It refers 
the genesis of things to the operation of natural laws, 
by which the earth, and all the planets, suns, and stars 
have shaped themselves, in the lapse of ages, out of the 
shapeless, igneous mass that furnished the raw material 
of their being, and by which all the tribes of animated 
nature, with man at their head, have been -evolved, in 
their order, from certain vesicles and rudimental germs 
of organic life. Now, the agency of God, in the view 
of faith, is as much required to conduct this process, 
and to furnish the elements out of which this develop- 
ment proceeds, as it would be to form each creature by 
itself, with a special act of creative skill. But this is 



THE EE TREATING GOD. 



41 



not the scientific aspect of the subject. Science puts 
God out of view, and substitutes law instead. A per- 
sonal agent in the processes of nature is not apparent 
to scientific investigation. 

If law and design and intelligent order are no 
demonstrations of God to the understanding, neither 
are the tokens, as we regard them, of providential 
care, — the marks of divine beneficence, the bounty of 
Nature, the joy of which all beings partake according 
to the measure of their capacity and kind, — demon- 
strations of God to the understanding. The under- 
standing recognizes good in nature, — genial sunbeams, 
refreshing showers ; the smiles of heaven, the wealth 
of earth ; the beauty of flowers, the deliciousness of 
fruits. But the understanding sees also evil in nature, 
— evil and suffering so manifold, so vast, so irreme- 
diable, that mere logic could never reconcile its exist- 
ence with the doctrine of one God of boundless wisdom, 
power, and goodness, of whom and by whom all things 
are. Faith alone can vindicate that doctrine against 
the contradiction of this enormous woe. And even 
faith, in most religions, has had recourse to the suppo- 
sition of an evil principle to meet the difficulty w T hich 
theism encounters in this aspect of things. 

Passing from nature to the moral world, shall we 
seek for the agency of God in human life? Shall 
we seek him as ruling and overruling Providence? 
An essential part of faith in God is faith in divine 
providence. No belief is more precious to the human 
heart, and none perhaps more needful, than faith in a 
special, providential agency interposing succor in sea- 
sons of peril and distress. . But this sacred idea, this 



42 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

cherished conviction, without which religion can hardly 
exist, the understanding refuses to verify. The under- 
standing cannot find, in the cases which are cited of 
such interposition, any special and extraordinary agency 
exerted to secure a particular end. The event so sig- 
nalized in the view of faith is found to have, like every 
other event, its natural antecedent, and to stand in 
intimate, unbroken connection with the constant order 
of human things. The guiding power in such cases, 
though extraordinary in our experience, is not found to 
be extraordinary in itself. It flashed intensely upon 
our feeling ; but, when sought by the understanding, it 
hides itself in the ordinary, fixed series of agencies and 
functions by which all the processes of nature, and 
all the events of life, are conducted and brought to 
pass. God came nearer to our consciousness in this 
instance than in others ; but the understanding finds 
here also no unveiled Divinity. It is still the same 
hidden, secret force, the same inexplicable, inextricable 
web of cause and effect ; no thinner, no more trans- 
parent, at this point than at others in our experience 
of life. 

There are cases in which our impatience craves the 
special action of God's providential government, not 
for our own, but for others' and Humanity's sake, - — 
cases which seem to us to cry aloud for divilie interpo- 
sition, in the way of protection or of retribution, to 
avert some impending evil or avenge some outrageous 
wrong ; cases in which we feel, that, if we had the 
power, we could not refrain from exerting it in such a 
cause. "Oh for an hour of Omnipotence ! " sighs the 
outraged heart, in view of triumphant wrong. When 



THE RETREATING GOD. 



43 



the liberties of a people are assailed with unrighteous 
usurpation ; when the union and existence of a nation 
are threatened by rebellious treason ; when the God- 
defying evil-doer prospers in his wickedness, — it seems 
to us that a merciful and just God cannot look on, and 
see the mischief grow and the crime succeed, the good 
suffer and the righteous perish, without stretching forth 
the arm of his power to smite and to save. But when 
did Providence ever visibly respond to such demand? 
The interposition comes not : God hides himself when 
most we need and invoke his aid. "My God! my 
God ! why hast thou forsaken me ?" is a cry which 
elicits no theophany, and wrings no audible response 
from the heavens, — not even when uttered by the Son 
of man. The answer is found in the heart alone, — the 
trusty heart; the brave, strong heart; the deep, un- 
fathomable heart, that flings its wondrous self into the 
balance, and outweighs a world of woe. 

History is full of apparent injustices. We see ca- 
lamities piled on the head of the good ; we see treacher- 
ous and bloody men prosper to the last. A Huss, a 
Cranmer, a Sidney, a More, we see perish at the 
stake or beneath the axe ; while the judges and kings 
who condemn them die quietly in then' beds. We 
see a Richelieu, guilty of every vice, licentious, cruel, 
tyrannical, loaded with riches and honors, crowned 
with every gift of fortune, reaching an age of more 
than fourscore years without reverse ; while men like 
Raleigh and Yane are doomed to a felon's death. 
Christ is crucified, and Barabbas set free. Had the 
Sou of man but come down from the cross, every knee 
had bowed ; but he came not down. A righteous God 



44 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE IS 31. 



does not interpose with visible retributions to avenge 
his violated laws, or to rescue and protect his faithful 
servants. Ivor is the world so arranged by any princi- 
ples inherent in its constitution, and invariable in their 
operation, as to bring only good to the good, and only 
evil to the wicked. The most we can say is, that 
the good, on the whole, are more likely to prosper, 
and the wicked to fail ; and that, not from any provi- 
dential interference for or against, but through the in- 
herent strength of the former and the fatal disability of 
the latter. Further than this, the moral government 
of God, which forms so essential an article of faith, 
does not approve itself, does not reveal itself, to the 
understanding. God, in his character of moral gov- 
ernor and judge, as in every other predicate affirmed 
by religion, is inaccessible to all attempts of the under- 
standing to verify his attributes, 

So, whether we seek him in the realms of space, in 
the processes of nature, or in human life, God hides 
himself from the curious intellect, more inscrutable 
now, in the full age of the human understanding, than 
in its childhood ; retiring ever farther, the farther we 
advance in culture and knowledge. To the early world, 
he seemed separated only by distance of space. The 
imagination enthroned him on mountain-tops or above 
the clouds. It was deemed not impossible that he 
might appear to the human eye in a human form, and 
converse with mortals face to face. But science, which 
has scaled all heights and sounded all deeps, has dis- 
pelled this illusion, and, while extending indefinitely 
the bounds of creation, can find no room for a local 
God. He is separated from us now, not by distance 



THE RETREATING GOD. 



45 



of space, but by the impossibility, in our intellectual 
enlightenment , of forming any image of his being which 
reason does not immediately rebuke as incongruous. 
To the intellect, he is removed by the impassable gulf 
which yawns between the finite and the infinite, be- 
tween every organized nature and uncreated mind. 
He hides himself the more, the nearer we seem to ap- 
proach him in intelligence. Other mysteries disappear 
like spectos of the night before the spreading illumina- 
tion of science ; but this one mystery deepens and deep- 
ens with increasing light. 

And let us be glad that it is so ; that this aboriginal 
mystery remains, inviolable, impregnable, unsearchable 
still ; that while the profane intellect is removing the 
veil from so many a wonder which its marvellousness 
had endeared to our early faith, and letting daylight in 
upon so many a recess long consecrated to our imagina- 
tion by embowering shade, here still is a veil which no 
human intellect will ever lift ; a covert where wonder 
and awe, and faith, their offspring, may repose for ever ; 
an idea on which the mind, retreating from the shallow- 
ness of human knowledge, may rest, and be sure that 
no plummet cast by mortal thought or immortal inquiry 
will ever sound that infinite deep. Man needs this 
mystery for the health of his spirit, as he needs for his 
physical well-being the sweet intercession of overshad- 
owing night. He needs the relief of shade for his 
mental eye as well as for his bodily. Religion needs 
mystery, and cannot exist without it. Without mys- 
tery, it degenerates into mere mechanical philosophy ; 
into arithmetical calculation ; into ethical systems that 
may serve to smooth the outward life, but exert no 



46 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

quickening power on the soul. The tree of life, like 
the plants of the earth, needs darkness for its roots ; 
while its fruit-bearing branches rejoice in the light. It 
is good to know that here is a mystery which no inqui- 
sition of science can detect, and no reach of intellectual 
vision comprehend ; that the highest created intelli- 
gence, searching, soaring, sounding through eternity, 
can never attain to a theory of God which shall cover 
all the dimensions and define all the attributes and ex- 
haust all the secrets of his being. A God whom the 
intellect might fathom would be no God to us. Let us 
understand this ; let us freely admit it, — admit the 
futility of all attempts to demonstrate God to the un- 
derstanding, to prove him from the marvels of nature, 
to establish the fact of Godhead by induction. Let us 
freely concede to the atheist, to the positivist, the in- 
adequacy of such demonstration, the inconsequence of 
most of the reasoning employed for this end. 

There is no danger that science will ever unclasp 
man's hold of this primal truth, or seduce the general 
heart from the Being more assured to us than our own ; 
the Being whose certainty is the basis and guaranty of 
ail certainty beside. 

God withdraws from the speculating intellect. He 
will not be laid hold of with scientific inquiry ; but shut 
the eye of speculation, and the heart soon finds him 
who is personally related to every soul. Let every soul 
bless the never -to -be -known, — grateful, like the 
prophet in the rock-cleft, for even the vanishing skirts 
of the mystery in which the Eternal hides, reverently 
adoring where we cannot comprehend ; content to fol- 
low where we cannot fathom ; happy if we are able 



THE RETREATING GOD. 



47 



to walk by faith where neither man nor angel can ever 
walk by sight. 

At the funeral of Ferdusi, says his biographer, 
the Scheikh Aboul Kasem refused to repeat the cus- 
tomary prayer, because the deceased had sung the 
praise of the Magi. The following night, he saw, in a 
vision, Ferdusi in Paradise, in a blaze of glory. Being 
asked how he came to be thus exalted, he replied, "It 
was because of that one verse of mine in which I sun 2: 
the unsearchable God : ? Thou art the highest and the 
deepest. I know not what thou art. Thou art all 
that thou art.'" 

Religion would press science into her service, and 
compel her to testify of theism. But science has her 
own appointed way of serving the truth : she furnishes 
her own incidental and involuntary illustrations of 
Deity, and will not be subsidized by religion, nor ren- 
der the kind of testimony which religion demands. 
Science is no theist : her business is to seek the causes 
of things in the universe of things, and not to appeal 
to supermundane power. Her mission and that of 
religion, as ministers of truth, are essentially one ; but 
the methods and immediate objects of the two are 
entirely distinct, and neither should usurp the other's 
function. The end of science is knowledge ; that is, 
intellectual possession : the end of religion is worship ; 
that is, intellectual renunciation. The aim of the one 
is conquest; the aim of the other is surrender. Both, 
in different ways, are a search after truth. But in 
ways how different ! Science seeks with the senses, 
with the understanding, with computation and deduc- 



48 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

tion, with analysis and hypothesis. Religion seeks 
with the trusting heart and devout aspiration. Science 
would fathom all the realms of being, would stand face 
to face with the final fact, and write her eureka on 
the core of creation. Religion is content to bow low 
before an Unknown, Unknowable. 

Such being the divergence of their nature and func- 
tion, it is not to be expected that science and religion 
will ever unite in one perception. It is not to be 
expected that religion will attain to scientific demon- 
stration of her convictions ; it is not to be expected 
that science will ever appropriate those convictions as 
scientific truth. It is possible that a higher synthesis 
may one day unite them in a new and better bond than 
the old infructuous union which theology has sought to 
enforce : meanwhile, let each pursue its separate way. 
Let science have her rule in the heights and the deeps, 
wherever she can reach, and establish her sway. Let 
her reconstruct the genesis of nature, lay over again 
the courses of the planet, and lean her ladder against 
the stars. But, after all, it is faith that builds the 
house where life and honor love to dwell. All great 
works, all noble births, all that is most precious and 
saving in life, — scriptures, temples, hymns, — all 
beautiful arts, all saintly and heroic lives, all grand and 
sublime things, are her offspring. When faith lan- 
guishes, civilization droops, empires perish. When 
faith revives in some new advent of the Spirit, new 
empires start into life. The course of ascending his- 
tory is tracked by her benefactions ; of history descend- 
ing, by her hurts. Her monuments, in distant lands 
and ages past, are honored in their decays and draw 



THE RETREATING GOD. 



49 



the wondering eyes. These are the things which men 
traverse earth and sea to behold, — the pyramids that 
still point heavenward after the lapse of four thousand 
years, the stupendous aisles of Phike, the unerring 
sculptures of Athens, the sacred dust of Palestine, the 
newer marvels of Christian Rome. All these are the 
offspring of faith : they consecrate the world. Curiosity 
traces them out in every remote corner of the globe. 
Science waits upon them with eager ministries ; traffic 
and travel are accommodated to them ; railroads are 
built to convey pilgrims to their sites ; at their crum- 
bling altar-stones, devotion rekindles her fires. 

Shall men wander so far to behold what faith has 
done in time past, and despise the power of faith in the 
present ? That wonder - working power which laid 
the entablature of Denderah, and sprung the arches of 
Cologne, is no antique, no recluse of the middle age, 
no native of Egypt or Rome, but cosmopolitan and 
modern as the sun. God her father, and Humanity 
her mother, survive all change ; and the constant off- 
spring works hitherto, and will work. 



n 

THE ADVANCING GOD. 



II. 



THE ADVANCING GOD. 

It belongs to the nature of God, or, what is practically 
the same thing, it belongs to our idea of God, that he 
should make himself known. Our idea of God in- 
cludes the Creator. An uncreative God is no God, 
since God is conceivable only as the correlate of a finite 
world. But creation — especially the creation of con- 
scious, intelligent beings- — implies conscious intelli- 
gence in the Creator. And, if God be supposed self- 
conscious, he must be supposed to will the reflection of 
himself in intelligent minds.* Or, to rest our thesis 
on more practical ground, if God be that moral Sover- 
eign whom we suppose, it follows that the subjects of 
his rule must be made acquainted with the Lord of their 
allegiance. 

The necessity of revelation is thus grounded in the 
very idea of God. 

Assuming, then, that God, by his nature, is self- 
revealing, and must make himself known to intelligent 
beings, what will be the method and conditions of that 



* This statement perhaps is too condensed. God, conscious of his per- 
fection, must will the recognition of that perfection in intelligent beings, as 
their ideal and way to a blessed life, — that being the only supposable end 
of the moral creation. 

[53] 



54 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



revelation? In what way can we suppose that God 
will declare himself, his will and his truth, to man? 
Let any one figure to himself a demonstration that 
would satisfy all mankind of the being and attributes 
of God, — of such a God as theism represents, — what 
will he propose ? Shall we say that some stupendous 
prodigy would best accomplish that result ? — some ex- 
hibition so far transcending human power and skill, 
that all who beheld it should be forced to confess a 
superhuman agent; therewith, some clear, emphatic an- 
nunciation of the truth to be received ? — an appari- 
tion in the sky, with accompanying voice out of the 
heavens? — a scroll cast down upon the earth, or tab- 
lets, received amid lightnings and thunders on some 
mountain-top, inscribed with the lessons of Deity? 
Somewhat after this fashion would be, I suppose, the 
first conception of a revelation from God. Such, in 
fact, was the Hebrew idea. But closer attention will 
convince every one who reflects on the subject, that no 
such portent could serve as a permanent communica- 
tion, valid to all generations, from God to man. Its 
efficacy, at the most, would be confined to the sphere 
in which it occurred and to those who witnessed it, or 
their immediate offspring. Beyond that sphere, and 
beyond the experience of eye-witnesses and the children 
of eye-witnesses, it would soon become an incredible 
tradition, a legendary myth, an old wives' fable, which 
the critical understanding, unable to adjust it with other 
experiences, would unfailingly set aside. 

Or, if we suppose the revealing portent to be a 
stated permanent wonder, it would soon cease to be 
a wonder at all ; it would take its place among the 



THE ADVANCING GOD. 



55 



forms and processes of daily nature, and be regarded 
with no deeper attention, and no livelier emotion, than 
sunrise and sunset or the rainbow or the moon's phases. 
For what indeed is universal nature, — this ancient 
frame of earth and sky, with its stated wonders, its 
solemn shows, its serviceable forces, its unfathomable 
deeps and golden fires, its august days and refulgent 
nights, — what is it but just that portent, — a present 
and pressing demonstration of the living God ? What 
stronger demonstration can there be? what prodigy 
more astounding ? If they believe not in sunrise and 
sunset, in summer and winter, in earth and sky, neither 
will they believe though an angel stood in the sun, and 
proclaimed the fact of Deity, or though the stars were 
constellated into runes that should spell the sacred 
name. No prodigy can reveal God, for the reason 
that prodigies can only appeal to the senses ; and the 
strongest demonstration of God to the senses is already 
given in the universe as it passes before our eyes. 

Yet this demonstration has never sufficed to convey 
the knowledge of God to minds unenlightened by other 
revelation. We know how, age after age, the earth, 
as it traversed the annual round, had clothed itself with 
annual splendors ; how bloom and hoarfrost had chased 
each other around the belted globe, and sunrise and 
sunset balanced their pomps, and the heavens declared 
the glory of God ; how day unto day had spoken his 
word, and night unto night had shown his wisdom ; 
and yet how many ages had elapsed before that word 
was understood, or that wisdom perceived? And Ave 
know how small a portion of the race, comparatively 
speaking, ha§ even yet seized the idea of God, — of the 



58 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

only God. It is plain that the senses have no knowl- 
edge of God, nor, through the senses, the understand- 
ing ; although, — the idea once started in the mind, both 
sense and understanding may nourish and confirm it, 
By no prodigy does God reveal himself, nor by any 
external demonstration. 

Revelation is not external, but internal. Internal in 
the first instance ; then, in a secondary sense and degree, 
it may become, as personal or ecclesiastical authority, 
external. 

The first revelation of God is a revelation to the 
moral sense. For what is it in God that is nearest to 
man, and which man is most concerned to know? Not 
his creative power, not the fact of creatorship, but the 
moral archetype, the moral ideal, which, received by 
the conscience, becomes the moral law. If God were 
merely omnipotent force or transcendent skill ; if all 
that could be said of him were, that "he can create and 
he destroy," or that the universe is his handiwork, it 
would matter little Avhether we knew him or knew him 
not ; it would matter little whether the universe were 
conceived as the product of a single will or of many 
wills, or whether as a self-existent power. What it 
really concerns us to know of God, is, not that he 
made the worlds, but that he is justice and truth and 
holiness and love. And of this the evidence is not 
external, but internal. Nature does not furnish it. 
Nature knows nothing of holiness, — has no perception, 
exhibits no trace, of the moral law^. "The depth saith, 
It is not in me ; and the sea saith, It is not with me." 
Man would never have inferred it from the visible crea- 
tion, until it was first revealed to him by a voice within. 



THE ADVANCING GOD. 



57 



Some elect individual of rare endowments and ex- 
ceptional moral nature, living in the midst of poly- 
theisms and wild superstitions, reflecting on the facts 
of consciousness, perceives in himself a law which im- 
pels him, in spite of inclination and passion, to choose 
the right and refuse the wrong. This law he refers 
to the Author of his being, and concludes that the Au- 
thor of his being is not mere powder and cunning, but a 
holy Will, a moral Governor and Judge. This is the 
first revelation of Godhead ; for, until God is known as 
moral ideal, he is not known at all. Whatever bears 
the name of Deity previous to that, is fetish or myth, 
and lies without the pale of theism and revelation. 

In the mental process which I have described, it is 
not necessary, nor is it possible, to draw the line be- 
tween the spontaneous action of the individual mind, 
and the action upon it of the mind of God, — between 
reflection and inspiration. The vulgar idea of revela- 
tion as a purely external communication supposes in 
the human subject no other agency than obedient recep- 
tion of some truth or command conveyed from without 
by an audible voice or visible sign. It is not enough, 
in the view of this idea, that Moses experiences within 
himself an impulse which he interprets as divine com- 
mission ; it is not enough that he is thus, by the wit- 
ness in the heart, divinely called. God must appear to 
him externally ; he must hear a voice ; he must see an 
apparition which represents God in person. Christian 
thought has outgrown such fancies. All direct revela- 
tion is internal; and, in that revelation, reflection and 
inspiration combine. The mind is not a passive re- 
cipient, but an active, co-operating power. In every 



58 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



original intuition of the mind, there is something divine M 
and in all inspiration there is human co-agency, volun- 
tary effort, intense thought, meditation musing till the 
fire burns. 

When therefore certain truths are said to be revealed, 
or given by inspiration of God, we are not to under- 
stand that they are given, so to speak, bodily ; that 
they are put into the mind, or breathed into the mind, 
from without, in distinct propositions. We are to un- 
derstand, rather, a state of mental exaltation, a quick- 
ening of the mental faculties, whereby the prophet or 
seer arrives at perceptions beyond the reach of ordinary 
powers or ordinary states of mind. This mental ex- 
altation, this quickening of the powers, is inspiration, 
the divine Spirit co-operating with and re-enforcing the 
action of the mind. And this is revelation ; the un- 
veiling of hidden truth by quick prophetic insight ; 
the intuition of the Spirit that " searcheth all things, 
even the deep things of God." 

The prime condition, the one indispensable prere- 
quisite, of all revelation is sincerity, entire surrender 
of the mind to the leadings of the Spirit. The truth 
comes only to such as seek it with perfect simplicity 
and singleness of purpose, without pre - occupation, 
without conceit. Only to such does God reveal himself. 
On the other hand, these elect souls, these seers and 
prophets, may be supposed to be specially endowed 
and qualified by God to become the oracles and organs 
of spiritual truth. With the strictest propriety, there- 
fore, they are said to be "called," or, considered in re- 
lation to their fellow-men and their earthly work, to be 
"sent," by God. 



THE ADVANCING GOD. 



59 



If, now, it be asked how revelation is to be discrimi- 
nated from mere philosophic speculation, I answer, 
First, by its practical character, its sensuous, popular 
handling of the deepest questions and dearest concerns 
of the soul. The truths of revelation are no ineta- 
physic conceptions, no labored inductions, no analytic 
subtleties, no abstract reasonings, which can only be 
expressed in abstruse, scholastic phraseology, but plain, 
emphatic enunciations of truths concerning God and 
man, duty, destiny, and human well-being ; such as the 
humblest and most uncultured can appreciate and ap- 
propriate, and turn to use. Plato and Plotinus, Spinosa 
and Hegel, speak only through the medium of books to 
scholars, — here and there a scattered few. Moses and 
Paul, through the oral circulation of their word, ad- 
dress themselves to kindreds and nations. Philosophy 
concerns itself with intellectual and theoretical aspects 
and relations ; revelation, with practical. All its utter- 
ances have a moral bearing : they point to some practi- 
cal use, some work to be performed, some saving 
discipline, some rule of life, some peril to be shunned, 
some evil to be put away, some prize to be secured, 
some heavenly consolation. God in revelation is pre- 
sented in no theosophic formulas, — as abstract Deity, 
Soul of the world, the one universal Substance, or 
however speculation may strive to express the divine 
nature, — but in personal, practical relations ; as x a— 
ther, Ruler, Judge. Xot the God of speculation, but 
the God of experience, personally present, and personally 
related to every soul. 

Another criterion of revelation, distinguishing it from 
mere philosophy, is authority, — the authority it gives 



60 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



to the Teacher who first declares its truths, the authority 
with which those truths are clothed, as uttered by him. 
It was said of Jesus by his contemporaries, that he 
"* spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes," 
- — not as the learned and philosophic of his time. 
They felt that here was something more than learning 
or cleverness or mental ingenuity. In these utterances, 
there was no casuistry or cunning, and no dialectic 
prowess, but real insight, direct intuition of the truth ; 
hence, rightful assurance, and the weight which that 
assurance unfailingly gives. Jesus, says Eenan, did not 
wgue with his disciples ; he did not preach his opinions ; 
he preached himself. This is the impression which 
revelation makes, and revelation only, in that degree. 
The character, no doubt, is a part of this effect. The 
moral pre-eminence which marks the true prophet, his 
sanctity of life, is one ingredient in his authority. I 
can hardly conceive of a high degree of spiritual insight 
associated with great moral defects. But moral excel- 
lence, as seen in the manners and the life, is not the 
true or chief source of this authority. One can easily 
imagine great purity of life, a character unblemished, 
and abounding in all the virtues, without much insight, 
and, consequently, without authority. It would not be 
difficult to name individuals, among the saints of his- 
tory, whose life was blameless, and whose virtues un- 
surpassed ; but whose opinions, notwithstanding, carry 
no weight, — who have no authority in matters of belief. 
I find no fault in St. Francis of Assisi, or Charles 
Borromeo, or Philip Xeri ; but their views and convic- 
tions on spiritual topics would not influence my faith. 
Moral superiority there must be in the organs of revela- 



THE ADVANCING GOD. 



61 



tion; but moral superiority, in this connection, means 
something more than blameless manners and a virtuous 
life. It means a superior nature : it includes intellect- 
ual power, but intellectual subordinate to moral. It is 
nearly related, if not identical with, what, in its intel- 
lectual manifestations, in poetry and art and the con- 
duct of affairs, we call genius. It includes that, but 
with it unites a moral intensity which genius lacks. It 
is genius adopted by the Spirit of God into heavenly 
fellowship, and consecrated to heavenly uses. 

In a rude and uncritical age or population, the pro- 
phet who appears as the organ of revelation will be a 
reputed worker of miracles. "Whether he actually per- 
form them or not, he will have the credit of miraculous 
works. For this, in the popular judgment which dei- 
fies material power and exalts material phenomena as 
God's chief witnesses, is the test of revelation, the only 
authentic proof and warrant of divine authority. "TThat 
sign showest thou ? 99 and w Show us a sign from Hea- 
ven," is the popular demand. On the contrary, in an 
age of scientific culture, of critical investigation, the 
reality of such performances will be disputed ; and not 
only so, but the very allegation of miraculous works, in 
the judgment of some, will discredit the revelation and 
the prophet of whose truth and claims they are cited as 
proofs. 

The two positions, — the popular and the scientific, 
— it seems to me, are equally erroneous. To say that 
revelation is impossible without miracle, or that miracle 
is the only valid proof of revelation, is inverting the di- 
vine order. It is subordinating the greater to the less. 
The prophet's intuition of the truth is more than any 



62 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



feat which he may perform in the world of sense. 
Truth is a right relation between the human and the 
divine. To see the truth is to see God ; to live the truth 
is to be like God : and he who effects that vision and 
that likeness performs the greatest of all works, greater 
than healing the sick or raising the dead. And if it be 
urged that the latter is a necessary condition of the 
former ; that the prophet, in order to make his word 
seem truth, and secure its entrance into the mind, must 
exhibit superhuman power ; that so only can he draw 
the requisite attention to himself and his mission ; that, 
granting the superhuman power and granting the mira- 
culous work, it is God that speaks in the prophet's 
word, and without this, only man, — I reply, in the 
first place, that, so far as the word is true, it is God 
that speaks in any case ; for all truth is of God. 
And, again, I maintain that a candid examination of 
the history of religion will show, that, where miracles 
were claimed, the belief in the prophet preceded the 
belief in the miracles, and furnished its chief support; 
and that the opponents and unbelieving who rejected 
the prophet's word were not convinced by his wonder- 
ful works. "But, though he had done so many mira- 
cles before them, yet believed they not on him." 

But then, to deny the possibility of miracle, — that 
is, of any thing out of the ordinary course of human 
experience, of any thing that may not be explained by 
laws yet discovered, or paralleled with ascertained facts, 
— appears to me equally unphilosophical. What right 
has science to dictate a negative judgment of this ques- 
tion? what right, from all that is known, to determine 
all that can be? Who will presume to draw the 



THE ADVANCING GOD. 



G3 



boundary-line of the possible ? " The laws of nature 
cannot be violated." Granted; but who claims that 
miracle is a violation of the laws of nature ? And what 
are the so-called fJ laws of nature 99 but our own gener- 
alizations of observed facts ? And what is the so-called 
"constancy of nature " but the statement, in objective 
terms, of the limitation of our experience? And who, 
moreover, has had such private advices from the Author 
of nature as to warrant the conclusion, that all the 
laws of nature have been discovered, and all the laws 
of spirit? and that, perchance, some unknown law may 
not subsidize, and so seemingly contradict, some known 
one, as the law of projectiles seemingly contradicts the 
law of gravitation? W A miracle cannot be proved." 
Granted. Does it therefore follow thence that a mira- 
cle cannot be ? I receive no truth and no prophet on 
the ground of miracles ; but I can believe in a wonder- 
working Power. I can believe that the man of God, 
in closer alliance with, and so partaking more largely 
of, the one sole Power that moves and makes this 
world of shows, may effect results impossible to men 
of ordinary vision, and unprecedented in human expe- 
rience. To believe the contrary, seems to me not very 
rational and not very cheering. I can conceive, that 
the prophet, through the might of the Spirit, shall work 
miracles ; and, to many, the miracles will be a confir- 
mation of his mission. But they will not be performed 
for that sole purpose : they will be the natural working 
of a spirit in league with God, intent on beneficent 
ends, and overcoming natural obstacles by the willing 
of that faith to which nothing is impossible. I cannot 
conceive, that the prophet should parade his wonders 



64 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



for the mere purpose of drawing attention to himself , 
that he should say in effect, "Behold! I do this and 
that feat which to you were impossible ; therefore what 
I tell you is true." The Son of man repels, as a devil- 
ish suggestion, the idea of amazing the world by throw- 
ing himself from a pinnacle of the temple. 

Finally, revelation and philosophy are differenced by 
their respective results. Philosophy founds schools; 
revelation, churches. Philosophy discusses ; revelation 
prophesies. The one has professors; the other, con- 
fessors and martyrs. The one is represented by lec- 
tureships ; the other, by sacraments. The one utters 
treatises ; the other, Bibles. Through these, its pecu- 
liar products, revelation assumes a secondary phase 
and becomes external, — what we call a religious dis- 
pensation. Such are Mosaism, Islamism, Christianity. 
This is revelation in the usual popular sense, and the 
only revelation known to the mass of mankind. Direct, 
internal revelation, in any degree, is a rare experience. 
A revelation so emphatic and intense as to issue in a 
Church, as to furnish the ground of a new dispensation, 
has been the experience of a few individuals only in all 
time. The mass of mankind must receive then* religion 
at second hand, and receive it on historical authority, 
as they receive the greater part of all their knowledge. 
The accredited prophet, the Church, the Bible, and 
even perhaps the favorite preacher, the catechism, the 
creed of their sect, are revelation to them. Thus 
the founders of religions acquire a mediatorial charac- 
ter : they become interpreters of heavenly mysteries, 
the medium of communication from God to man ; in 
some cases, themselves the God of the popular religion. 



THE ADVANCING GOD, 



65 



So strong a disposition there is in man to interpose a 
middle term, a third person, between the Supreme and 
the human souk 

In this way, then, God makes himself known, and 
becomes a fact to human intelligence. Not by prodigy 
or portent, in whirlwind or in fire, but through the still 
small voice of the moral sentiment in man, he advances 
from the unimaginable secret of his being into such 
cognition as the finite mind can have of the Eternal. 
On some retired soul, intensely musing, far back in the 
unknown past, first dawned the great Idea which fills 
and rules this earthly sphere ; the idea whose birth in 
the human mind was the birth of an intelligible, spirit- 
ual world from the dark, wild chaos of polytheism ; the 
idea which alone gives being -a plan, creation a purpose, 
a meaning to life, to holy aspiration an adequate goal. 
Once risen on the world, the quickening, saving idea 
did not set ; but, when it waxed dim, in the dim, con- 
fused ages of nature-worship and priestly oppression 
which compose the cycles of primeval history ; fresh 
inspiration was breathed upon it, new musing souls 
rekindled its beam, new revelations confirmed the old ; 
— new revelations and better, clearer, fuller, as human 
progress opened the mind, and reflection deepened 
with advancing life. For revelation is a thing of 
degrees ; the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Ja- 
cob, though sacred and dear as the morning-star of 
theism, is not the God of the Isaiahs, still less the 
God who is a spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and 
truth. 

The revealing word was always in the world; the 

5 



66 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



receptive mind, not always. "He came unto his own, 
and his own received him not." But, finally, they did 
receive him, — some with such power and fulness as to 
be, in the high apostolic sense, the "sons of God." 
And those who received the light in its fulness dispensed 
it to others : they became the lights of their time, — 
sages, prophets, servants of God, to whom and through 
whom "he revealed his secret." From them issued 
streams which outlived them ; which passed into say- 
ings, laws ; which became institutions, became churches, 
became fixed traditions, descending from generation to 
generation. And all such traditions, however hardened 
and sapless with the lapse of time they become, attest 
some former inspiration which flooded the soul, as the 
fossil-shell on the mountain-side attests the swelling of 
the waters in some foregone spasm of the globe. 

The fruit of revelation is tradition ; but revelation 
itself, in its origin and essence, is spiritual insight. 
The different terms express two different aspects of one 
fact. Spiritual insight is the human aspect ; revela- 
tion, the divine. But spiritual insight is something far 
different from induction or ratiocination. The knowl- 
edge of God is not a conclusion of the understanding, 
but an intuition of the moral sense. Theism never 
originated in that way. The being of God would never 
be inferred from the constitution of things, without the 
idea pre-existing in the mind.* There is no natural 



* The uttermost that legitimate induction can establish, on this basis, is 
intelligent Power, — the so-called "First Cause" to which speculation refers 
the creation of the world. But that intelligent "First Cause" is not the 
God of religion. There is nothing in it of ethical or religious import. The 
argument from design may suggest a Designer, but can never amount to 



THE ADVANCING GOD. 



67 



religion, in the sense of a theism, born of the understand- 
ing ; but the being of God is given in .the moral nature 
of man. There, if anywhere, the Eternal reveals him- 
self from time to time, in successive communications, 
to such as are able to divine his secret. 

Revelation is a thing of degrees ; yet all revelation is 
essentially the same. All revelation is in man and 
through man. It is not an unearthly voice speaking to 
us out of the clouds : it is not an angelic apparition ; 
but always the voice of a brother man that instructs 
and exhorts. And that voice is not the revelation it- 
self, but only its witness and declaration. The true 
revelation is internal. The only effectual knowledge 
of God is the private experience of the individual soul. 
The earliest prophet of Jehovism saw this and confessed 
it, appealing from his own written law to the elder 
tables of the heart : " For this commandment is not 
hidden from thee ; neither is it afar off. It is not in 
the heavens, that thou shouldst say, Who will go up for 

demonstration of a God. Cicero, arguing against the atheism of Epicurus, 
affirms it to be just as credible that the letters which compose the "Iliad," if 
thrown promiscuously into the air, should come to the ground arranged in 
that order, as it is that the world was made by chance. The argument from 
design has never been better stated; but Cicero was no monotheist, and 
Cicero's doctrine, such as it was, created the argument, not the argument 
the doctrine. The Esquimaux told the missionary, that he had often re- 
flected how a kadjak, or canoe, with all its tackle, does not come of itself, 
but requires to be constructed with much care and skill; and how a bird is 
a far more wonderful contrivance than the best Jcadjak: and yet the 
bird is no man's workmanship. I bethought me, he said, that a bird pro- 
ceeds from its parents, and they from their parents ; but there must have 
been some first parents. Whence did they proceed? I concluded that 
there must be some one who is able to make them and every thing else, — 
some one more knowing and powerful than the wisest man. So reasoned 
the Esquimaux; and yet he had never arrived at the idea of God. A cun- 
ning artificer, surpassing the cunning of men, but no God. 



68 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

us to heaven, and bring it down to us, that we may 
hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that 
thou shouldst say, "Who shall go over the sea for us, 
and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? But 
the word is very nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy 
heart, that thou may est hear it and do it." 



HI. 

THE REGENT GOD. 



in. 



THE REGENT GOD. 

All who believe in the being of God believe in a 
divine Providence of some kind in the natural as in the 
moral world ; but opinions vary as to the nature and 
method of its action. Some believe it a rule of fixed 
laws, established in the beginning, inherent in nature, 
and self-acting. Others believe it to be partly a rule 
of fixed laws, and partly an immediate action of the 
divine will. Others still believe it to be wholly the im- 
mediate action of the divine will. The first of these 
opinions makes Providence to consist of a pre-adjust- 
ment of the universe, dating from the first commence- 
ment of its existence, and so complete as to compre- 
hend every agency and every event, — the world's 
entire history from beginning to end. It makes the 
world a perfect machine, — a machine directed by God, 
who bears the same relation to it that an engineer does 
to the engine which he invented and superintends. 
The second makes Providence to consist in occasional 
interposition, where the course of nature, as it is called, 
i.e., the ordinary agencies at work in the world, the 
regular order of events, would otherwise fail to accom- 
plish the desired ends, or where those agencies would 

[71] 



72 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



result in consequences to be avoided. It makes the 
world a machine, but not a perfect one, — a machine 
which requires regulation, adjustment, alteration. The 
third makes Providence to consist in those very agen- 
cies which compose the order of nature and the regular 
course of events, — a present, immediate, continuous 
action of Deity in every event that takes place. It 
makes the world no machine at all, but a living organ- 
ism pervaded by the spirit of God, a constant and im- 
mediate expression of the divine mind. I propose to 
examine these different theories, with a view to deter- 
mine the true idea of divine Providence in human 
affairs. 

1. The first is the theory of those who suppose that 
the world is governed by general and fixed laws, — 
laws impressed upon the universe in the beginning of 
creation, — by which it now pursues its course and ful- 
fils its functions. They suppose that the act of creation 
embraced a plan or scheme of operation, which the 
universe, once set in motion, has followed ever since, as 
a piece of human mechanism fulfils of itself the func- 
tions intended and provided for in its construction. 
Every event that takes place is the necessary conse- 
quence of these laws, and could not be other than it is. 
The theory does not suppose that every event was spe- 
cially willed by the Author of the universe : only the 
laws and processes which produced it are so willed. 
The laws of the universe are not aimed at particular 
cases, but at general results. In other words, the 
world is governed, not by partial, but by general laws. 
The action of tnese laws will sometimes result in dis- 
astrous consequences to individuals, especially when 



THE REGENT GOD. 



73 



applied by man to his purposes, — when human free- 
agency comes in as one of the factors in determining 
the course of events. But these disasters, it is argued, 
are rare exceptions, and do not materially affect the 
beneficent design and operation of these laws. They 
are designed to produce, and do produce, the greatest 
possible good on the whole. They could not be other 
than they are without diminishing the amount of good 
in the world. Any change in the constitution and 
government of the universe, by which these disasters 
could be avoided, would cause more evil than it would 
cure. The vast preponderance of good in the world 
demonstrates the wisdom of the present arrangement, 
and, in spite of occasional, unavoidable exceptions, 
vindicates the general beneficence of divine rule by 
fixed and universal laws. 

The objection to this theory is, that it separates God 
from his works and makes him, instead of a present, 
living, inworking power, at the most, a mere director 
and overseer of past creations. It supposes a God 
intensely active at one time, and comparatively inactive 
ever since ; exhausting his activity in one original 
effort of creative power, then ceasing from creation, 
and taking up his millennial rest. It places him far 
away in the past, and gives us in effect a universe with- 
out a God. For what need of a God, a present, living 
God, or what room for one, if laws will suffice for the 
world's governance ? — if the world once created and 
put in motion, and furnished with the requisite agencies 
and adaptations, will thenceforth govern itself, obey- 
ing, with automatic regularity, the impulse imparted, 
and the laws assigned, to it by one original fiat of crea- 



74 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



tive power? The world, in this view, is a soulless, 
unconscious mechanism, cast off by its master, whose 
care of it was exhausted in its first production, and 
thenceforth left to take care of itself. Suppose that 
this view of creation could satisfy the understanding ; 
suppose it sufficient to account for the order of events, 
and explain the phenomena of nature and of life,— it 
can never satisfy the heart. The heart demands a pres- 
ent God, — a God who is never far from any one of us ; 
it demands the immediate presence and constant care of 
a heavenly Father ; it demands, when it looks upon na- 
ture, to feel that God is there, not in his laws only, but 
in conscious and perpetual action i not in the sense of a 
Wisdom and a Goodness, embodied in arrangements 
contrived and perfected long ago, as the mind of aft 
artificer may be said to present in the work of his 
hands, but in the sense of a Love co-present to every 
aspect of nature, and a Will in working in every event 
that takes place. It demands, in human life, to know 
that it is not abandoned to hard, inevitable laws, and 
processes that act with unconscious necessity, but to 
feel the guiding hand of the Shepherd God, in whom 
is no want. The heart rejects the theory of pre-estab- 
lished laws : it demands an immediate, personal Provi- 
dence. 

But neither is this theory, rightly considered, suffi- 
cient for the understanding. It is based on a notion, 
which, however plausible it may seem at first view, is 
not only incapable of demonstration, but will be found, 
on a closer inspection, to be very questionable. It 
borrows the idea of a self-acting universe from those 
contrivances of human workmanship, which, once set 



THE REGENT GOD. 



75 



in motion, by the interaction of mechanical forces will 
retain that motion, and perform certain functions, for a 
given time, without the aid of any other agency than 
their own mechanism. If human skill can construct a 
machine which will act thus by laws and forces inherent 
in itself, then infinite Wisdom, it is argued, may con- 
struct one which will do the same, on an infinitely 
larger scale, for all time; — the material universe is 
such a machine. But the analogy fails in one import- 
ant particular. Man makes the machine, but he does 
not make the laws and capacities by which it acts. He 
avails himself of laws and capacities that are given in 
the substances he employs. And what are those laws 
and capacities ? They are nothing inherent in the sub- 
stances themselves ; they are not attributes of matter. 
To call them so, may suffice for practical purposes ; but 
it does not satisfy reason. Matter, by definition, is 
passive and incapable : it does not act of itself, but 
is acted upon. Laws and capacities are not attributes 
of matter, but of intelligence. In reality, the machines 
of man's make are not self-acting, but are acted upon 
by intelligence ; and that intelligence is God. All the 
forces of the material world are only methods of divine 
action ; and what we call the laws of the material world 
are only a phrase to denote the regularity and usualness 
of that action. When I say that the law of gravita- 
tion causes a body thrown into the air to return to the 
ground, I do not express a property of bodies, but a 
simple fact, — a fact which the term " gravitation " des- 
ignates, but does not explain ; of which no explanation 
can be given but the immediate volition of God. Thus 
the inference drawn from human contrivances in favor 



76 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



of a self-acting universe is a fallacy. The idea of such 
a universe has no foundation in analogy, or in any 
thing we know of the nature of things. 

2. The second theory of Providence supposes it to 
consist partly in pre-established, general laws, and 
partly in occasional interpositions of divine power for 
the sake of certain ends not included in the original 
plan of creation, and which general laws would not 
have accomplished. The latter method is called a par- 
ticular Providence ; the other, a general one. Those 
who believe in such interposition find examples of it in 
remarkable escapes from danger, in instances of special 
good-fortune, or in signal retributions — ^judgments," 
as they axe called — incurred by evil-doers. This hy- 
pothesis is even more objectionable than the first. It 
adds to the notion of pre-established laws and a self- 
acting universe, which we have seen to be groundless, 
the greater difficulty of ineffectual contrivance. It sup- 
poses, like the other, a mechanized nature ; but supposes 
an imperfect mechanism, — a mechanism which fails to 
accomplish all that should be accomplished, which re- 
quires constant addition, correction, and improvement. 
It supposes a Contriver whose contrivances come into 
collision with his own will, a God whose providence is 
in conflict with his own works. Moreover, it gives the 
providence of God the appearance of arbitrariness and 
partiality. If here one is rescued from peril, why is 
another, equally deserving, permitted to perish? If 
one sinner is overtaken with divine retribution, why 
does another, equally guilty, escape unharmed? In 
supposing Providence more active in some cases than 
in others, putting in here, quiescent there, it virtually 



THE REGENT GOD. 



77 



supposes that God does some things, and not others ; 
that some events are the products of his agency, and 
others not : and the query arises, If this is of God, why 
is not that of God? If helpful here, why help-denying 
there? If the world is specially guided by divine 
power in parts, why is that power not uniformly active? 
"We are right in speaking of special providences ; if by 
that term we designate striking providences ; if we 
merely express our own feeling of their import to us, 
if it is understood that the specialty refers to our own 
personal experience, and not to the will of God. When, 
in any instance, we have experienced a signal felicity, 
and feel ourselves peculiarly blest, the devout mind is 
peculiarly impressed with a feeling of providential care 
and love. To our gratitude, such blessing is a special 
Providence; and we do well to emphasize it as such. 
At the same time, we ought to understand, that, so far 
as the divine government is concerned, every event that 
befalls is equally providential. To suppose that some 
things are more so than others, is to charge God with a 
fitful and partial rule, instead of a uniform care and 
government over us. 

3. TTe come, then, to the third hypothesis, which 
supposes Providence to consist in the everywhere pres- 
ent, uniform, and direct action of Deity ; which sup- 
poses it to be the sum and substance of all these 
agencies, processes, and laws which we call Nature, 
and by which the material universe moves and subsists. 
According to this theory, there is no power in nature, 
or in works of man's device, but God ; no law but 
divine volition ; no process but divine performance. 
Gravitation is one mode of Providence; magnetism, 



78 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



another ; electricity, another. Providence is attraction 
and repulsion, cohesion and explosion, flood-tide and 
ebb-tide, sunrise and sunset, motion and rest. All the 
energies of nature are methods of divine activity, and 
all the phenomena of nature are phases of the one eter- 
nal Presence. According^ to this view, whatever chances 
is willed, — the mischance as well as the looked-for and 
desired result, the failure as well as the fulfilment, the 
disaster as well as the success, the foundered and unre- 
turning vessel as well as the safe arrival, the earth- 
quake which shatters a city as well as the sunrise which 
blesses a world : according to this view, the unlooked- 
for escape is providential ; but equally providential the 
loss and the death. Whatever chances is willed ; and 
whatever is willed is right. 

This is the theory of Providence which my own feel- 
ing inclines me to embrace, — the only theory which 
approves itself to my judgment, as satisfying equally 
mind and heart. It satisfies the understanding by its 
simplicity. It avoids the paradox of an active universe 
and an inactive God, of intense activity at one time and 
quiescence ever after, of a sabbath longer than the term 
of labor. It avoids the perplexity of two divinities, 
— Nature and God; of self - subsisting energies and 
forces ; of attributes without an adequate substance ; 
and, lastly, of a double Providence, — one for every- 
day use, and one for special occasions. It offers a 
plain, distinct, and decided view of God's connection 
with the natural world, — his agency in, and his gov- 
ernment over it. It presents an idea of Providence, 
which, if any object to it on other grounds, must be 
allowed, at least, to be unambiguous, well-defined, and 



THE RECENT GOD. 



79 



perfectly intelligible, — a Providence at once universal 
and particular, uniform and unceasing ; not coming 
in and going out, now here and now there, as occasion 
may require, but everywhere present and all time ac- 
tive, and everywhere and all time one and the same, — 
a Providence, in fact, which is nature itself in all its 
aspects and ways. This theory satisfies the heart by 
bringing God nearer to us. It shows him equally near 
at all times, and equally active and equally benefi- 
cent * at all times, in all things. It dissipates the hard 
and comfortless doctrine of a government of general 
laws, which, acting with fatal and remorseless necessity, 
pursue their course and fulfil their functions, blindly 
regardless of individual necessities ; and which, though 
productive of general good, are often fraught with indi- 
vidual evil. It makes God the special guardian of each 
individual, as if that individual were Providence's sole 
and peculiar charge, and the universe made and man- 
aged expressly for his behoof. It realizes to each one 
with gracious emphasis, as a personal experience, the 
beautiful word of the Psalmist, " The Lord is my shep- 
herd : I shall not want." It spiritualizes the universe, 
instead of mechanizing it. It gives us a full world, 
instead of an empty one ; instead of brute matter, in- 
sensate forms and unconscious forces, the living Pres- 
ence, the conscious Spirit, the pervading God. The 
universe is transfigured to him who considers it in the 
light of this doctrine. " The dead, inert mass which 
choked up space has vanished, and instead thereof flows 



* This statement presupposes the moral character of God as a being 
whose purpose is the good of his creatures. 



80 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

and waves and rushes the eternal stream of life and 
power and deed. All is quick, all is soul, and gazes 
upon us with bright spirit-eyes, and speaks in spirit- 
tones to the heart."* In the eye of this hypothesis, the 
universe is not a past product of creative effort, which, 
once produced, subsists thenceforth by mere conserva- 
tive power, but a present, momentary, continuous pro- 
duction. The action by which it subsists is not a 
preservation of some former work, long since created 
and complete, but an ever-new creation. The universe 
is new-born continually, — birth everlasting out of the 
bosom of self-existent, original being. The old types 
remain ; but the substance is new evermore, — an eter- 
nal generation from the Lord ; life welling forth in 
measureless efflux, fresh from the heart of the living 
God; a beginningless, endless procession of self-com- 
municating Love. 

Informed with this view, I can never be alone in the 
world ; for the world itself is the presence of God to 
my mind and heart. Wherever the moment may find 
me, — in the thronged highway, in the closet's retirement, 
in pathless deserts, on the rolling deep, — the benign 
Presence confronts me face to face. Wherever I turn 
my feet, wherever I turn my thought, I encounter the 
besetting God. He is my sun, and he my shade. 
The morning comes, he floods me with his light ; 
in the evening, the heavens are all eyes, through which 
he gazes as a pitying Father on his child. If I say, 
w Surely the darkness shall cover me," I look within, 
and there I meet him "in eternal day." Every process 



* Fichte, " Bestimmung des Menschen." 



THE REGENT GOD. 



81 



in nature is the going-forth of the Everlasting on his 
messages of love, and every event in my experience is 
a message of love fulfilled in me. 

If any one object to this view, that, in shunning the 
one extreme of a far-away, isolated God, — a God 
who dwells apart from his works in solitary self-sufii- 
cingness, — it runs to the opposite extreme of panthe- 
ism, I can only say, I have no desire to repel the plea. 
I accept the charge of pantheism, not in the cheerless, 
impious sense of a God all world, and a world instead 
of God, but in the true and primary sense of a world 
all God; i.e., a God co-present to all his works, per- 
vading and embracing all ; a God, in apostolic phrase, 
"in whom and through whom are all things." If this 
is pantheism, it is the pantheism which has ever been 
the doctrine of the deepest piety : it is the pantheism 
professed by devout men in every age of the world. It 
is the pantheism of Berkeley when he speaks of " finite 
agents imbosomed in an infinite Mind." It is the pan- 
theism of Newton when he speaks of " a Being per- 
vading space, who, present to all things, sees and 
embraces all things present within himself." It is the 
pantheism of David when he says, " Thou hast beset me 
behind and before." — "If I ascend into heaven, behold ! 
thou art there ; if I make my bed in the under- world, 
behold ! thou art there." It is the pantheism of Paul 
when he says, "In him we live and move, and have 
our being." 

To embrace this truth with a faith proportioned to its 
blessed import, to believe it truly and to feel it wholly, 
is the best result of practical wisdom, as it is the dis- 
tinguishing trait of pious souls. To feel around us the 

6 



82 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

everlasting arm in all time of peril, to know and adore 
the present God in all time of distress, to discern and 
to follow the guiding " Shepherd" in every strait, is the 
high privilege of manly faith. Such faith is strength 
in weakness, refreshment in sorrow, hope in death. 
So instructed and so panoplied, we shall M not fear the 
power of any adversary," nor sink despairing under any 
fate. We shall bide undaunted our season of peril, 
and fearless tread the dark valley. When the blows of 
adversity fall thick and fast on our devoted heads, we 
shall bear, with strength proportioned to our day, the 
spoiling of our goods, the loss of our beloved, the dis- 
appointment of our hopes ; — most comforted then when 
most afflicted, most trusting then when most severely 
fried, most hopeful when most stricken, most calmly 
blest when at length we have learned effectually the 
hard but fruitful lesson of unconditional, undoubting 
submission to the Power which passes alike compre- 
hension and control. 

" Submit, in this or any other sphere, 
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear ; 
Safe in the hand of one disposing Power, 
Or in the natal or the mortal hour. 
All nature is but art unknown to thee ; 
All chance, direction which thou canst not see ; 
All discord, harmony not understood ; 
All partial evil, universal good." 



/ 



IV. 



THE ANSWERING GOD. 



IV. 



THE ANSWERING GOD. 

In our prayers and addresses to the unseen Power, 
faith takes it for granted that the suppliant is heard ; 
that the prayer is not a cry into empty space, a breath- 
ing wasted on the desert air ; that there are really two 
parties in all such exercises, — the soul that prays, and 
the God who hears. Faith supposes this, or prayer 
would be the most unmeaning mockery, and, with hon- 
est, simple souls, would soon cease altogether. 

And yet, if we consider it, what a daring assump- 
tion, to suppose that the Infinite takes note of individual 
supplications ! When we think what countless myriads 
of suppliants are proffering their petitions, it may be, 
at one and the same moment, and, it may be, for con- 
tradictory favors ; in such wise that to grant the re- 
quests of one party would be to deny the requests of 
the other; as where, in the conflict of armies, individu- 
als on both sides pray for success in battle ; or where 
religionists of different faiths entreat the divine blessing, 
each on their separate cause, and desire the prevalence 
of their respective churches; — when we think of this, 
it baffles the understanding to conceive that the infinite 
God should give special heed to, the prayers of individ- 

[85] 



86 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



ual finite beings. On the other hand, the belief of this 
is so essential to religion, that the two must stand or 
fall together. Religion, in any sense characteristically 
distinct from philosophy, poetry, or art, is impossible 
without worship ; and worship is hardly possible without 
prayer ; and prayer would soon cease without the belief 
in a Being who hears and heeds supplication, if he does 
not always grant the request. 

And happily, the power of the understanding to con- 
ceive is not the measure of spiritual truth. The under- 
standing knows nothing of the existence of God by any 
insight or function of its own: and, if the understand- 
ing were the only guide and the only avenue of truth to 
man, no prayer would ever go up from mortal lips, and 
no Godward thought or desire would ever arise in mor- 
tal breasts. The understanding views every thing in 
the light of its own laws, which weigh and measure the 
material world, and reduce all the processes of nature 
and life to arithmetical calculation. Happily there is 
something else in the world beside measure and weight, 
and the multiplication-table, and cold, mechanical laws. 
"What a world it would be in which every thing went by 
dead-weight; where all could be calculated, — so much 
always in a given time ; so much, and no more, with 
given means ! — a world in which there should be no 
surprises, no incalculable factor ever interposed among 
the measurable forces that work the machine and work 
out the results of every-day life, no inspiration in man, 
no reserved power in nature, no residue of spirit or 
supplemental grace in God. Such is the world in 
which the understanding lives and moves : a piece of 
mechanism of limited capacity, in which there is noth- 



THE ANSWERING GOD. 



87 



ing spontaneous, in which every act is predetermined, 
and piety itself the result of inevitable laws. In such 
a world there is evidently no place and no legitimate 
ground for prayer. The world is a machine set agoing 
with the prime creation, and all the processes of nature 
and human history are mechanical functions : there is 
nothing for it but to take what the mill of all-work may 
grind for us, and ask no questions. Instead of a pres- 
ent God with whom our spirits may commune, and 
whose spirit responds to our seeking, we must rough it 
as we can with driving-wheel and fly-wheel, ■ — memo- 
rials of a God who lived long ago, — and trust that the 
power may not fail, nor the gearing foul, in our short 
day. 

The world which faith inhabits is otherwise consti- 
tuted. In that world, God is the present Will by 
whose momentary action it exists and proceeds, — a 
Will in immediate contact with our wills : and prayer, 
in that world, is a real power ; and human life, instead 
of the blind play of shaft and piston, is growth from a 
seed, susceptible of momentary modification through 
the action of that power of prayer on that present, 
living Will. 

For those who live always and altogether in that 
world, there needs no other proof than their own faith 
that prayer is heard by the Being addressed ; that their 
souls are in actual communication with God, and God 
with them, through this medium. But faith is not 
equally active at all times. Doubts of the objective 
efficacy of prayer will sometimes obtrude themselves on 
otherwise believing souls. Do we breathe our petitions 
into empty space ? or do they light upon some listening 



88 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



Presence? Do they reach their destination in some 
sympathizing, infinite Spirit, — some divine Person, 
who, shrouded in unfathomable but not inaccessible 
mystery, receives and considers the supplication ad- 
dressed to him ? It is a question between theism and 
atheism. 

There are moments in life when some pledge is de- 
sired of divine communication, — some demonstration 
of a real, responsive relation between the soul and the 
Supreme. A man is hesitating, let us suppose, be- 
tween two sides of a given alternative : he has to choose 
between two courses of conduct, between doing or not 
doing a certain thing, between taking or not taking a 
certain position. His decision involves consequences 
of vast moment to himself and others. Reasons are 
weighty on both sides, for and against. He is in a 
strait betwixt two. Unable or unwilling to decide of 
his own wisdom, he craves direction from the All-wise. 
Let God decide : let the burden of responsibility rest 
with him ! His will be done ! But what is his will 
concerning the matter in debate ? How shall the sup- 
pliant, seeking divine guidance, be apprised of it? 

Individuals, in such cases, resort to different meas- 
ures, or satisfy themselves with different tests, accord- 
ing as different ages and faiths, or differences of 
individual constitution, may incline. 

The Hebrew Gideon, fifth in that line of military 
dictators known in our Bible by the name of "Judges," 
felt himself divinely called to free his people from the 
ravages of the Midianites who invaded their borders 
and laid waste the land. Before entering on this diffi- 
cult and dangerous enterprise, he required to be assured 



THE ANSWERING GOD. 



89 



of the truth of his calling by some visible token which 
should justify and supplement the inspiration of faith, 
and be a God-given pledge of success. "If now I 
have found grace in thy sight, show me a sign that thou 
talkest with me.". . . "If thou wilt save Israel by my 
hand, as thou hast said, behold ! I will put a fleece of 
wool in the floor ; and if the dew be on the fleece only, 
and it be dry upon all the earth besides, then shall I 
know that thou wilt save Israel by my hand as thou 
hast said." According to the story, the sign was vouch- 
safed : the fleece, in the morning, was wet with dew, 
and the earth around was dry. The chief still wavered. 
Natural causes might explain the winder. Another 
trial was required. Let the miracle now be reversed. 
"Let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all 
the ground let there be dew. And God did so that 
night ; for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there 
was dew on all the ground." 

I enter into no explanation of this story. My con- 
cern is not with Gideon's fleece, but with the impres- 
sion on the mind of the suppliant, — with the feeling 
which led him to desire this external authentication of 
his mission. The same feeling has impelled men in 
every age to look for demonstrations of the will of 
Heaven in some visible or audible sign. The Greeks 
had recourse to oracles, which consisted in the utter- 
ances of a kind of delirium, supposed to be a medium 
of divine communications. The Hebrews consulted the 
sparkle of jewels, or were counselled by voices in 
the air. The Romans drew auguries from the entrails 
of victims and the flight of birds. Decision by lot is a 
common resort in cases of doubtful choice. When, 



90 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

after the death of Judas Iscariot, the disciples of Jesus 
proceeded to fill his vacant office, of two individuals who 
seemed to be equally fitted for the function, they prayed 
the Lord to designate by lot the one whom he had 
chosen. And, when the lot fell upon Matthias, they 
doubted not that the Lord had directed the event in 
accordance with their prayer. 

Chance readings in sacred or cherished books have 
also been accepted as signs from heaven. St. Augus- 
tine, at a critical moment of his life, resolved that the 
passage on which his eye should first light, on opening 
a copy of Paul's Epistles, should determine his future 
course. He opened and read, " Make no provision for 
the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof," and forthwith em- 
braced a life of devotion. How many good Christians, 
the world over, have sought and received counsel, sug- 
gestion, consolation, inspiration, from accidental words 
of Scripture ! The soldier on the eve of battle, open- 
ing his pocket Bible in the tent, chances on the passage, 
"A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at 
thy right hand ; but it shall not come nigh thee." And 
he thinks, on the field the next day, in the thickest of 
the fight, that he bears a charmed life. The preacher 
on shipboard, in imminent peril as he fancies, opens at 
random, and reads, "Thou shalt not die, but live and 
declare my statutes." He feels that God has spoken to 
him in those words, and the tempest loses its terrors. 
There are few devout persons who have not at some 
moment of their lives experienced what seemed to be an 
immediate communication of God -to their souls, — who 
have not felt that God spoke to them individually by 
some written word or sign addressed to the eye or ear, 



THE ANSWERING GOD. 



91 



or, it may be, some dream which they so interpreted, 
or some internal experience which they could not, or 
would not, explain in any other sense than that of the 
immediate action of God on their mind. The prepared 
soul finds a divine communication in every word or 
event that touches it effectually and savingly in its hour 
of need. Wherever it finds God especially near, it 
feels itself found and addressed by him. 

But reason still questions, Can there be a direct 
communication with God, and of God with us, as man 
converses with man ? Can there be any token or dem- 
onstration to the senses or the understanding of such 
communication? Can there be, in the nature of things, 
any credible sign that God talks with us, or hears and 
heeds our prayer? — that he is really a party, an ac- 
tive, conscious party, in this supposed communication 
with Deity in prayer ? — that the conscious action is not 
all on one side, — on the side of the soul? Can there 
be any proof of this that will stand the test of criti- 
cism? 

Here are two distinct questions. The possibility of a 
real communication between the human and divine is 
one question. The possibility of any proof to the un- 
derstanding, of such communication, is another. The 
first is substantially, as I have said, a question between 
theism and atheism ; between God and no God, in the 
proper sense of the term ; between a personal God and 
any other conception to which we may choose to apply 
that sacred name. Mutual communications between the 
human soul and a personal God follow necessarily, if 
truly and devoutly sought on the human side, from the 
nature of that divine Person. And, if we dismiss from 



92 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



our idea of God the attribute of personality, what have 
we left but the absolute rule of almighty Power, — the 
origin and law of universal being ? A wise and benefi- 
cent rule, if you please, — a rule of which the purpose 
and issue is the general good, and submission to which 
is duty and safety, but not a God who receives sup- 
plication, or to whom supplication would ever be ad- 
dressed by rational souls. Prayer, in that case, can 
mean nothing more than devout contemplation of the 
universal order, and devout acquiescence therein ; grate- 
ful recognition of the good received, patient endurance 
of necessary evil. This, too, is a kind of religion, but 
not a religion which meets the requirements of faith, or 
satisfies devout aspiration. It is not enough for me to 
know that the world is not subject to irrational, lawless 
accident, but governed, and well governed, and ordered 
for good. I desire to enter into personal, conscious, 
mutual relations with the Power that rules ; to feel that 
I, individually, am known and loved by that ruling 
Power ; can reach him with my petitions, so that he 
shall heed them ; that I can commune with a Spirit 
above the level of the human, and above the order of 
nature ; and that Spirit with me. The idea of a person 
in the Godhead answers to this demand : it reaches my 
need with infinite succors. The idea of a personal God 
carries with it the possibility — nay, certainty — of di- 
vine communication to all who sincerely desire, and 
earnestly and perseveringly seek it. 

But when we inquire further, if any sign is possible 
of the fact and reality of such communication, which 
shall satisfy the understanding, — any proof impregna- 
ble to criticism, — reason answers that such signs are 



THE ANSWERING GOD. 



93 



neither possible nor desirable. The region in which 
these communications take place is a region of faith, 
and only through faith and to faith are such communi- 
cations possible. When God speaks to the understand- 
ing, it is not of himself, or things spiritual, that he 
speaks, but of such things only as the understanding, 
whose function is to methodize sensible impressions, 
referring them to physical or physiological laws, can 
receive. Only those truths which admit of mathemati- 
cal demonstration, or those which follow with logical 
necessity from incontrovertible premises, are impregnable 
to criticism. Spiritual truths, however assured to those 
who receive them, though certain as mathematical dem- 
onstration within their proper domain, cannot be proved 
to the understanding, because the domain itself to which 
they relate is outside of the sphere of the understanding, 
or more properly perhaps inside of it ; in either view, 
beyond the reach of that faculty, which deals only with 
sensible existences and their relations. It is impossible 
to imagine any outward sign or visible token of divine 
communications which the understanding will not dis- 
pute ; for which it will not find another interpretation. 
The Hebrew warrior doubted the very token he himself 
had desired : he demanded another, and would, with a 
little more criticism, have doubted that as well. Visi- 
ble tokens of divine communication there may be ; but 
faith will always be required to receive them as such. 
In the view of faith, the answer of prayer in the thing 
desired will seem a sufficient demonstration of the fact 
that the prayer is heard, and that the favor received is 
the natural effect and fruit of prayer. Yet it is impos- 
sible to prove to the understanding any real causal 



94 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



relation between the two. A sceptic, disinclined by 
mental habit to admit the principle involved, will dis- 
pose of such cases with the vague and accommodating 
phrase "coincidence;" which, duly considered, is only 
a different statement of the fact from another point of 
view. Coincidence is the external aspect of that for 
which some interior reason must be supposed. For 
though things which coincide are not always related as 
cause and effect, yet where, together with coincidence 
in time, there is also a mutual fitness and a moral link 
between the two, a reaching-forth of one toward the 
other, a natural correspondence between the antecedent 
and the consequent, it is fair to presume a divine adap- 
tation. Sober thought, independently of faith, will not 
rest satisfied with an empty name ; but, pursuing the 
inquiry, will see that coincidences are not blind acci- 
dent, but marks and moments of a pre-established har- 
mony which arranges these parallelisms between the 
natural and the moral world, and adjusts creation to 
the faithful soul. 

Further than this, it is not to be expected, and not 
to be desired, that the commerce with God assured 
to faith should be vouched to the senses by visible 
signs. One sees at once what a door would be opened 
to wild superstition and irreverent use, if such demon- 
strations were vouchsafed, or might be expected when- 
ever and by whomsoever desired ; how every event 
would be subsidized by vain curiosity impertinently 
questioning the deep things of God ; how all nature 
would be perverted to oracles of private interpretation 
by importunate souls ; and how all barriers between 
the holy and profane would be broken down. The 



THE ANSWERING GOD. 



95 



visionary Rousseau relates, that, in early youth, he 
sought, by throwing stones at a mark, to ascertain 
whether he was destined for heaven or hell. A hit or 
a miss diould be a sign from God of life eternal, or ever- 
lasting death. 2so wonder he took care, as he frankly 
confesses, to stand very near, and to have the mark 
conveniently broad. Such misapplications might be 
expected of any supposed license to question God by 
visible signs. The soul has a right to seek assurance 
of the presence and participation of God in its confer- 
ence with him, but not to prescribe the desired pledge, 
or to dictate the nature of the proof. It stands in the 
nature of the thing, that the proof must be internal, 
and the token evident only to faith. Such a token is a 
sudden inspiration breathed into the mind, or a sudden 
peace descending on the heart, in answer to the soul's 
aspiration and appeal ; the new strengthening of the 
will; the new-born courage; the new-born hope. 
These are the fire from heaven that kindles the flame on 
the altar, assuring an acceptable offering. What better 
sign can there be ? What surer pledge of a hearing, 
heeding, answering God? 

If there be the personal God whom faith conceives, 
there must be the personal relations and communica- 
tions with him which faith supposes and religion craves. 
Our spirits must be in contact with their kind. Some- 
where and somehow there must be an answer to every 
true prayer. For surely the economies of the moral 
world are not less exact than those of the natural. 
In the realm of matter, there is no waste. Not a grain 
of dust, not a drop of water, not a particle of vapor, 
can ever be lost to the sphere of which it is a compo- 



96 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



nent part. The dew which bathes the summer rose, 
and glorifies the meadow with its morning sheen, had its 
origin in what might seem to be the escapes and wastes 
of the planet. And, when rose and meadow have ex- 
haled their dews at the touch of the sun, the viewless, 
imponderable vapor is not dissipated beyond recall ; it 
is not all spent on the thankless air ; it is gathered and 
garnered in the chambers of the sky, and returns again 
in due season, according to its circuit, in orient dews 
or refreshing showers. And shall not the finer exhala- 
tions of the soul, — the prayers which are breathed 
from the deeps of the breast, the secret vows, the God- 
ward thought, the devout aspiration^ — shall not these 
also return again according to their circuit, and bring 
their blessing ? 



THE EXOEABLE GOD. 



V. 



THE EXORABLE GOD. 

Faith and unbelief alternate in human history, and 
shape the world according to their kind. An age of 
devotion followed by a period of secularism, a period 
of secularism followed by an age of devotion, inverts 
the proportions of mortal life. At one time, this earth 
is but the forecourt of an unseen, heavenly world; the 
lodge before the garden gates of a spiritual paradise ; a 
mere suburb of the city of God : at another, heaven and 
the life to come are only a perspective finish, ■ — a kind 
of artistic background to the earthly world. But, in 
every age, prayer and religion are one and inseparable : 
as much as there is of the one, so much of the other. 

For this is the one universal thing in religion, 
common alike to the lowest forms of nature-worship 
and the most sublime mysticism, more universal than 
even the belief in, God. Religions that have no God, 
as w T e understand that term, no Supreme Ruler of the 
universe, still practise prayer to such forces and demons 
as they know. However the exercise may vary, and 
whether performed by mechanism or meditation, whether 
it consist in the revolutions of a wheel, in manipulating 
beads, or in the rapt contemplation of the Quietist, 
prayer is stil] the essence of religion. The negroes of 

[99] 



100 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

Guinea, according to Father Loyer, along with their 
fetichism, believe in an unseen Power, and pray to it in 
this fashion, when, in the morning, they have washed 
in the running stream : K My God ! give me this day 
rice and yams ; give me gold and slaves and riches ; 
and grant that I may be active and swift. 95 Compare 
the frank and childish egoism of such petitions with the 
prayer of Socrates : ff Grant that I may be inwardly 
pure, and that my lot may be such as shall best agree 
with a right disposition of the mind ! " Compare it 
with the prayer of St. Augustine : w God grant that 
my heart may desire thee ; that, desiring, it may seek 
thee ; that, seeking, it may find ; that, finding, it may 
love ; that, loving, it may be redeemed from all evil ! 99 
Compare it with the prayer of J esus : ?f That they all 
may be one, as I, Father, am in thee, and thou in me ; 
that they may be one in us ! " Consider these four 
degrees of supplication, — the prayer for sensual grati- 
fication, the prayer for moral excellence, the prayer for 
God himself as the supreme Good, and, finally, the 
prayer that all mankind may be partakers of that good, 
— and learn from these examples the carry and the 
scope of this act of faith. 

Prayer for specific objects, proffered with the hope 
of influencing the divine Will, is the topic I am now to 
discuss. In the chapter preceding this, I considered 
the question, and maintained the fact (in the world of 
faith), of a real communication with God. The efficacy 
of prayer — its power to procure the desired blessing — 
is a quite distinct point. Is God an exorable being? 
On this question, religion and the current philosophy 



THE EXOEABLE GOD. 



101 



conflict. Religion assumes the efficacy of prayer as a 
fundamental postulate. The current philosophy pleads 
the alleged immutability of God, and the necessary 
order of events. God is supposed to have pre-arranged 
every thing, and every thing therefore to be unalter- 
ably fixed. Every thing that can happen to me is 
fore-ordained: so, and no otherwise, must it be with 
me. All the solicitation I can urge cannot move the 
Eternal from his fixed purpose, or change the complex- 
ion of my lot. Whatever it has seemed good to the 
All- wise that I should have or be, will come to pass 
without my asking, and in spite of my entreaty. 
And whatsoever it has not seemed good to the All-wise 
that I should have or be, that no asking will procure 
for me. Why, then, should I pray? 

The argument rests on a bare assumption. That 
God has predetermined every thing or any thing is 
pure hypothesis, — a theory of God unsubstantiated by 
any trustworthy authority, incapable of scientific dem- 
onstration. Unquestionably, the order of events is a 
necessary order. Every thing that takes place is the 
necessary consequence of something which went before 
it. But, when we say "predetermined," we transfer to 
God the modes and conditions of the finite mind. We 
imagine him subject, like ourselves, to the laws and 
order of time and place, with whom there is neither 
here nor there, nor before nor after. The order of 
events is necessary; inasmuch as it is not accidental, 
but governed by powers, and determined by causes, 
which act according to immutable laws. But then my 
will is one of those powers ; and prayer, being one of 
the modes in which my will acts, may be one of the 



102 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



causes which determine the order of events. God is in 
me as well as out of me. He acts not only on me and 
for me, but through me. Every movement of my sou] 
is one of his instrumentalities, and prayer among the 
rest. Therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose, that 
my destiny and others" destinies may be affected by my 
prayer. 

Another answer to this objection, drawn from the 
inflexibility of the divine nature and the necessary order 
of events, is, that no man believes it. No man believes 
it to that extent, that he is willing to act upon it as a 
rule of life, which would be equivalent to not acting at 
all. The objection is just as valid against every other 
act and effort, as against prayer. If all things are 
unalterably fixed and must come to pass, so and not 
otherwise, — whatever we do or omit to do, — then why 
act at all with a view to any end to be accomplished by 
our action? But no man is a fatalist to that extent. 
No man who professes to believe that all things are fore- 
ordained abstains from voluntary action on that account. 
You believe that God has predetermined whether A or 
B shall carry the day in a popular election : why should 
you take any steps to promote or prevent that which is 
fixed by inevitable decree ? But you do not hesitate to 
deposit your vote, and to use such means as you can, 
to secure the man of your choice. God has predeter- 
mined whether or no thieves shall break into your 
dwelling ; but you do not hesitate to adopt the usual 
precautions. God has predetermined whether or no 
your farm shall produce ; but you do not hesitate to 
fertilize the soil, and to put it in the best condition for 
the largest yield. The reason is, you see in these 



THE EXORABLE GOD. 



103 



cases, whatever your theory of fixed decrees, a relation 
of means to ends which invites to action. No man is 
so persuaded of the fore-ordination of events as not to 
exercise some voluntary agency of his own in bringing 
about such as are desirable, and staving off that which 
he fears. Whatever their theory, men practically be- 
lieve that events are contingent, and hang in some 
measure on their volition, — on their voluntary action. 
In prayer you do not see this relation of means and 
ends, and therefore you assume that it does not exist ; 
that prayer is unavailing for any practical end beyond 
the mind of the suppliant. " Our ignorance of Deity," 
says Plutarch, "manifests itself in two opposite tenden- 
cies : one is inordinate superstition ; the other, athe- 
ism." There are various kinds of atheism. Disbelief 
in prayer is one kind. 

But is the Deity an exorable being ? Is the all-wise 
Disposer of events to be moved by entreaty, determined 
by the prayer of finite minds ? This is not a question 
on which any one has a right to dogmatize. I only 
know that the Deity so reveals himself in me ; and I 
also know — who does not know? — that prayer, in 
imminent necessity, is a universal instinct of the human 
heart, — an instinct which characterizes man as man, 
and is common to all faiths and nations. There are 
few, perhaps none, who would not pray in some cases, 
however indisposed to prayer in general, by theory or 
habit, — who would not breathe forth a silent petition 
in moments of extreme peril. " When the wish within 
you," says " Asmus," "concerns you nearly, and is very 
ardent, it will not question long ; it will overpower you 
like a strong man armed ; it will hurry on a few rags 



104 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

of words, and knock at the door of heaven." — "I have 
great respect for the necessary order and connection of 
events ; but I cannot help thinking of Samson, who 
left the connection of the gate-leaves unchanged, but 
carried the whole gate off bodily on his shoulders." 
Philosophy or no philosophy, such is man ; such is 
the instinctive faith of the human soul ! This instinct 
supposes a meaning and efficacy in prayer, without 
which it would seem to have been implanted in vain. 
To all theory and reasoning and speculation on the 
subject, I oppose this inborn, ineradicable instinct of 
the soul, which, if it does not demonstrate the efficacy 
of prayer, affords at least a rational presumption in its 
favor, and, on the whole, is less likely to deceive us 
than our speculations. It may be objected, that these 
instinctive prayers for aid in great emergencies are not 
always answered : they do not always avert the im- 
pending evil. The calamity befalls, our prayers to the 
contrary notwithstanding. It may be so. The prayer 
is not always answered ; but who shall say that it is 
never answered? Who shall say, that, when unan- 
swered in the thing desired, it is not answered in some 
other and better way? 

As a question of philosophy, I much suspect that 
philosophy as shallow and insufficient which runs coun- 
ter to the native instincts of the soul. Philosophy ob- 
jects, that prayer is founded in low, anthropomorphic 
views of God. What if it should appear that the 
current philosophy itself is guilty, and that, in a far 
greater degree, of precisely the same fault? — that the 
view of God which that philosophy assumes is the least 
adequate, the most crude and unphilosophical, of the 



THE EXORABLE GOD. 



105 



two ? For is it not a mechanical view of divine methods 
and operations ? It regards God as a mechanician ; the 
world as a machine, which, once set agoing, obeys 
with automatic regularity the impulse imparted to it, — 
the law in its constitution, — and admits of no change. 
It places God afar off, apart from the world, which he 
governs by its own mechanism, interfering only to 
repair and adjust when the mechanism is out of gear. 
Is it not more philosophic to think of God as the imma- 
nent, all-present Source of life, and the universe as the 
manifestation of that life ? — to think of him, not as apart 
from his works, but as a Spirit pervading and possess- 
ing them and us, — he in us, and we in him, — and 
prayer as the felt contact of our spirits with his ? If 
this view is the true one, then the question whether 
God is exorable is already answered. TTe may boldly 
say that every genuine prayer affects the Deity in pro- 
portion to the faith that is in it. Every genuine prayer 
is a positive force in the universe of things. The eter- 
nal TTill — the axis of creation — bows and dips to 
human -entreaty. The world of spirits, subsisting and 
centred in God, is moved by it as the sea is moved by 
whatever stirs within its depths. The motion may not 
reach to the outward, visible result which the prayer 
contemplates. It may want the requisite force for that 
consummation. But every prayer, in proportion to the 
force that is in it, tends to that result. And the force 
that is in it is the measure of faith which inspires it ; 
which works in it and by it. Faith is the hold we have 
of the Godhead. Faith is a power which sways Om- 
nipotence. It is no figure of speech, no oriental exag- 
geration, when Jesus says, "If ye have faith, all things 



106 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



shall be possible to you." It is impossible to set any 
limit to this power. We may say, without irreverence, 
that God is constrained by it ; inasmuch as itself is 
divine. In this sense, it was said, "The Spirit itself 
maketh intercession for us." The Spirit prays, — God 
acting on God. 

I say, then, God is moved, constrained by prayer. 
I find the philosophy which denies the efficacy of prayer 
to be shallow and superficial. A more profound phi- 
losophy, a more faithful analysis of all the elements 
involved in the question, will lead to the opposite con- 
clusion. Every sincere prayer is effectual to some ex- 
tent : it is effectual in proportion to the faith that is in it. 
The prayer of perfect faith will never fail of its answer. 

On the other hand, this perfect faith is itself the 
inspiration of God, and not to be attained without ab- 
solute surrender to the supreme Will. 

Faith and prayer relate to each other as inspiration 
and aspiration, breathing in and breathing out, — the 
systole and diastole of the soul. In the one, we im- 
bibe the divine life : in the other, we express it. In 
faith, the Godhead floods the soul as the ocean rushes 
inland with the swelling tide. In prayer, the soul re- 
gurgitates again, and merges itself in the Divine. 

The efficacy of prayer depends on the measure of 
faith. Only that which we ask in full faith are we 
likely to receive. No rational man believes that he can 
obtain an accession to his property, success in financial 
speculation, or any worldly good, by praying for it ; be- 
cause no one who has well considered the discipline and 
ends of life can feel so assured of the necessity of these 
things to his well-being as to ask them with perfect 



THE EXORABLE GOD. 



107 



faith. A lurking unbelief will vitiate the truth and 
efficacy of such petitions: they verify the saying, "Ye 
ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss." Hay don, 
the painter, prayed for success with his pictures, intent 
only on the personal advantage to be gained by them, 
and did not succeed. George Muller prayed for pecu- 
niary succor in his charities, intent on the good of 
others, and again and again received an answer to his 
supplications, in pecuniary supplies. 

The prayer for even spiritual good may remain un- 
answered, if, while we perceive w r ith our understanding 
the need of divine grace, vre want that profound con- 
viction and fervent desire which prompt the prayer of 
faith. Only what we wish do we really pray for ; 
and all our wishes are prayers. There are who pray 
in set words for the gifts of the Spirit, while the 
heart's unworcled collect solicits the comforts of the 
flesh. They ask forgiveness of sins, and mean impu- 
nity ; they ask salvation, and mean prosperity, like the 
worshipper stigmatized by the Roman satyrist, who 
offered his prayer in due form to Apollo, but prayed 
between his teeth to the goddess of thieves : r ' O fair 
Laverna ! grant me the talent to cheat and defraud 
without detection, to get the better of all whom I 
shall deal with, at the same time to appear just and 
holy before men." It is not inconsistent with the theory 
of prayer, nor any proof against the principle, that 
many prayers should fail of their purpose : on the con- 
trary, the theory itself requires that they should. Only 
the prayer of faith is ever answered to the suppliant. 

I have spoken of prayers for specific objects ; for this 
was the topic I proposed to discuss. But the asking 



108 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



of favors is not the whole nor the most important part of 
prayer. Nor is the value of prayer to be measured by 
the answer in kind, Its best effect is that about which 
there is no dispute. There are many states and acts 
of the mind, beside asking of favors, which partake, in 
a greater or less degree, of the nature of prayer. Every 
reference to God in our thoughts, wishes, or actions, is 
prayer. Every emotion of gratitude for blessings en- 
joyed, every feeling of contrition for evil committed or 
duty neglected, every noble aspiration, every good 
resolution, every resignation to God's decree, every 
meditation on divine things, is prayer. 

There are many who complain that they can form to 
themselves no distinct conception of the Being to whom 
prayer is addressed. They have no definite object be- 
fore the mind. God seems to them so remote, so 
inconceivable, they cannot lay hold of him by any effort 
of the imagination, or fancy themselves in real com- 
munion with him. But why is it necessary to form 
a distinct conception of God ? Will the prayer be more 
effectual because addressed to a mental image, — a 
creature of the imagination? "Beware of idols." All 
that is necessary is the impression, the conviction, of 
overruling Power, divine Beneficence, incorruptible 
Justice, unchangeable Truth, presiding over all the 
course of things. With this conviction, let the soul 
go into itself, and consider its belongings, and consider 
its wants, and breathe its desires ; not attempt to form 
to itself any notion of Divinity, but confine itself to the 
thing, to the subject of prayer, — its needs, its aspirations, 
its hopes. Let it rouse and direct itself to worthy ends, 



THE EXORABLE GOD. 



109 



under a sense of its relation to the Eternal, its moral 
responsibilities, its spiritual calling; — that is prayer. 

The real difficulty lies behind these metaphysical 
objections. There is a sluggishness of mind which 
prevents it from collecting itself in a vigorous effort of 
self-communion. There is a coldness of heart which 
makes it indifferent to the supreme Good, — a practical 
unbelief which shuts the soul against God and the in- 
flux of his spirit. If these obstacles were not, there 
would be no questioning. The spirit of prayer would 
take possession of the soul, and keep an unbroken com- 
munication with the secret God. 

The spirit and life of prayer is the consciousness of 
God, the feeling that we are his, that he is ours, that 
nothing but the voluntary aversion of our spirits can 
separate us from him. A feeling of Deity as the power 
by which we live, the light by which we see, the great 
Reality in the knowledge of whom is eternal life, and 
whose participation is the supreme blessing. Where 
this consciousness lives and burns, there is prayer, 
though not always expressed in words. For the soul, 
in its highest devotion, is content to repose in the 
thought of God, asking nothing, seeking nothing ; its 
whole being concentrated in the one unuttered desire, 
"Thy will be done! 5 ' 

There are times, however, when the feeling, if genu- 
ine, cannot choose but utter itself in words. The more 
intense it is, the more apt it will be to seek that vent. 
"I was dumb with silence," says David: "I held my 
peace even from good." But, " while I mused, the fire 
burned ; then spake I with my tongue." 



110 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

I conclude with the words of one who, more than 
any writer of the English tongue, had explored this 
subject in its breadth and depth, and has written most 
profoundly concerning it : " Poor and miserable as this 
life is, we have all of us free access to all that is great 
and good and happy ; and we carry within ourselves 
the key to all the treasures that Heaven can bestow. 
We starve in the midst of plenty, — groan under in- 
firmities, with the remedy in our own hands; we live 
and die without knowing and feeling any thing of the 
one only Good, whilst we have it in our power to know 
and enjoy it as really and truly as we know and feel the 
power of this world. For heaven is as near to our 
souls as this world is to our bodies. . . . God, the 
only Good of all intelligent natures, is not an absent 
or distant God, but is more present to and in our souls 
than our own bodies ; and we are strangers to heaven, 
and without God in the world, for this only reason, 
that we want the spirit of prayer, which alone can, and 
which never fails to, unite us with the one only Good, 
and to open heaven and the kingdom of God within us. 
A root set in the finest soil and the best climate, and 
blessed with all that sun, air, and rain can do for it, is 
not in so sure a way of its growth to perfection as 
every man may be who aspires after that which God is 
ready and infinitely desirous to give him. For the sun 
meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him 
with half that certainty with which God, the source of 
all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs 
to partake of him." * 



* Law's " Spirit of Prayer." 



VI. 

THE OLD ENIGMA. 



VI. 



THE OLD ENIGMA. 

Whoso interrogates the order of nature from the 
ground of theism soon stumbles on the world-old prob- 
lem of Evil, — its origin, reason, and right to be in the 
scheme of things. The problem states itself thus in 
our inquiry. If a God created and governs this world 
of our^, — a God all powerful, wise, and good, — why 
are these attributes so imperfectly expressed in creation ? 
Why this immense deduction from the good, which a 
rule of perfect Love, conducted by infinite Wisdom, 
ought, it is believed, to secure to its subjects? Why 
does eternal Goodness permit the wide-spread evil with 
which creation groans ? Why this dark shadow which 
everywhere bounds our capacity, our well-being, our 
life? If only the guilty suffered, and suffered only in 
the measure of their guilt, such suffering would seem 
but just retribution, the wise operations of moral laws. 
But over and above the evil due to man's free agency, — 
the woes inflicted by human passion and all the misery 
incident to mortal folly and crime, — beside all this, 
which constitutes so large a part of the burdens of hu- 
manity, we are persecuted with evil which lies in the 
constitution of things, elemental plagues, hostilities of 
nature, national calamities, tempest, blight, physical 

8 [113] 



114 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

infirmities, monsters, madness, and all inevitable ills. 
The universe is full of them. Nature at her brightest 
conceals beneath that sun-beaming countenance innu- 
merable and inestimable griefs. " All being is in pain," 
said Paul. "Creation travails. 5 ' — "The heavens and 
the earth, and things without life,"- said Philo, "may be 
seen to suffer." Philosophers, ancient and modern, 
Christian and Pagan, have stood perplexed and aghast 
in the presence of the unveiled enormous woe. One 
of the most recent denounces the optimism which can 
see only good in the arrangements of nature, and 
which deems that this world of ours is the best possible 
world. "Evil," he says, "is real, colossal, incessant; 
the world is bad ; it is a misery to have been born." 
" Life is the natural history of sorrow ; it is the war of 
all against all, an internecine strife for ever renewed from 
age to age, till the crust of the planet shall peel off 
piecemeal." — " There are miracles of destructiveness in 
nature, — in the human as well as the brute creation. It 
is not only in the solitudes of the new world that plants 
of gorgeous hues delight in putrid miasmata, and drink 
the death which makes their life ; it is not there only 
that giant oaks are strangled by creeping vines, and die 
in their grasp. It is not in Australia only that the ant, 
by a prodigy of suicidal instinct, devours itself, nor only 
in the ocean-deeps that the young polype nourishes itself 
with the substance of its sire. Man surpasses all these 
horrors, and the word of Scripture is for ever true : 
f There are those who devour men as they eat bread.' " * 
Evil inheres in the constitution of things. The most 



* Schopenhauer. 



* 

THE OLD ENIGMA. 



115 



cheerful philosophy cannot blink the fact, however 
lightly it may esteem it, however hopefully it may reason 
about it. Evil abounds: what shall we say of it? 
why tolerated by perfect Love? why uncorrected by 
almighty Power? how reconciled with infinite Wis- 
dom ? This is the question on which age after age has 
tried its skill, and on which all philosophies thus far 
have foundered, if the test of philosophic success be an 
answer at once so luminous and so decisive as to solve 
every doubt, to satisfy every scruple of reason and piety, 
and to stop all further inquiry. 

The oldest solution of the great problem is also the 
most natural. It seems to have been the first rude 
effort of speculative thought in the world's infancy, and 
formed the basis of one of the most ancient of historic 
religions. The answer which the Persian gave to the 
question concerning the origin of evil, was the theory of 
two Gods, — a holy, just, and benevolent God, who 
created all that is good and healthful and blessed in 
nature, all that is fruitful of life and joy ; a God whose 
symbol is light, and whose truest visible type is the sun : 
and opposed to him a wicked and malevolent God, 
whose symbol is darkness ; who made all hateful and 
baleful creatures,— whatever hurts and destroys, — and 
to whom is attributed all the evil that is in the world. 
A fragment of this Persian faith was introduced through 
Judaism into Christianity, and still survives in the pop- 
ular notion of the Devil, who formerly occupied a 
larger place and played a more important part in Chris- 
tian systems of theology and philosophy than he does in 
the modified creeds of our time. Physical as well as 
moral evil, calamities, and disasters, hail, blight, light- 



116 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



ning, wrecks, and hurts of all kinds, were ascribed to 
him by our ancestors. Luther gravely charges him 
with the floods of the river Saale, with fires in the for- 
ests of Thuringia, and the sulphur in its wines.. 

The Satanic theory of the origin of evil has the 
advantage of great simplicity: it offers, if one could 
accept it, an easy and sufficient explanation of all exist- 
ing and all possible evil, and absolves the divine rule of 
all complicity with it. But it does not relieve the theo- 
logical difficulty involved in the incompatibility of evil 
with the supposition of infinite power and wisdom in 
the God of our worship. On the contrary, it bounds 
and circumscribes that infinity ; and while it absolves the 
divine rule of the charge of willingly grieving or afflict- 
ing, it also limits that rule by the empire, larger or 
smaller, as we may figure it, of a border-power and an 
outlying hostile State. It disturbs and degrades our 
idea of God by circumscribing his sway. It is no 
longer Omnipotence that rules, but Omnipotence quali- 
fied by the Devil. Moreover, although it explains the 
existence of evil, it presents another problem of equally 
difficult solution. The hypothesis is convenient till we 
look behind it, and then we fall upon a new entangle- 
ment greater than the first. The Devil explains every 
thing, but who shall explain the Devil ? A fallen angel, 
shall we say? — then explain to us that fall. 

And here we come upon another proposed solution of 
the problem of evil, of wide acceptation in the Christian 
Church, — the fall, whether of angels in heaven or of 
man on the earth ; more commonly understood of the 
latter; or let us say, sin, the necessary antecedent of 
the fall, and also its consequent. Sin, it is contended 



THE OLD ENIGMA. 



117 



by Christian theologians of a school which still very 
widely prevails, is the cause of all the evils that afflict 
mankind. All physical infirmities, ails, and plagues, 
nay, all cosmic disturbances, the war of the elements, 
all calamities that befall, are traceable and rightly 
attributable to man's transgression. The world was 
what it should be, a garden of delights, the Eden of 
the Bible, the golden age of Gentile tradition, — no 
noxious plants, no venomous reptiles, no beasts of prey, 
no briers or thorns, no tempests and no sterility, no 
need of heavy and exhausting toil, no burdensome 
cares, no aches or pains, — till man transgressed. 
Then, suddenly, nature was put out of joint, the uni- 
verse was dislocated : all these plagues and woes rushed 
in ; and the enemies of human happiness hastened to 
their prey as vultures and vermin flock to the banquet 
of corruption. This theory, which throws on the free- 
will of man the responsibility of natural as well as moral 
evil, seems at first to honor God in affirming a creation 
originally free from the imperfections and disorders, the 
discomforts and disasters, which now attend it, and which 
only opposition to God's will could engender. But 
rightly considered, critically weighed, it furnishes no 
satisfactory vindication of the fact and agency of evil in 
the scheme of things. What is gained by it for one of 
the divine attributes is lost to others. It presents a 
God whose plans are traversed, his agency thw r arted, 
his purposes of mercy defeated, by his creature. The 
divine Artificer constructs a world " of absolute perfec- 
tion," exempt from all harm, fruitful of blessing, and 
only blessing : his creature disobeys, and constrains him 
to undo his work, to remodel the universe on a baser 



118 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



scale, adjusting it to man's unworthiness. So Milton's 
great verse, the highest expression which Christian 
literature has given to this hypothesis, represents the 
origin of evil in the natural world. The Creator, he 
says, after Adam's transgression — 

" Calling forth by name 
His mighty angels, gave them several charge 
As sorted best with present things. The sun 
Had first his precept so to move, so shine, 
As might affect the earth with cold and heat 
Scarce tolerable ; and from the North to call 
Decrepit Winter, from the South to bring 
Solstitial Summer's heat. 

To the winds they set 
Their corners, when with bluster to confound 
Sea, air, and shore, the thunder when to roll 
With terror through the dark, aerial hall. 
Some say he bid his angels turn askance 
The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more 
From the sun's axle. They with labor pushed 
Oblique the eccentric globe, . . . 
. . . To bring in change 
Of seasons to each clime; else had the Spring 
Perpetual smiled on earth with verdant flowers. 

These changes in the heavens, though slow, produced 
Like change on sea and land; sidereal blast, 
Vapor and mist and exhalation hot, 
Corrupt, and pestilent . . . 
. . . Thus began 
Outrage from lifeless things . . 
Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl, 
And fish with fish ; to graze the herb all leaving, 
Devoured each other." 

Such, poetically set forth, is the theory of physical 
evil by moral delinquency. Making all needful allow- 
ance for the uses and laws of poetic representation, and 
granting, as we needs must, that a large proportion of 
the troubles and disasters that afflict mankind — some 



THE OLD ENIGMA. 



119 



bodily infirmities and most civil disorders — are the fruit 
of sin, I cannot persuade myself that man's transgres- 
sion has affected the poise of the planet and changed 
the angle of the earth's axis with the plane of the eclip- 
tic from a right to an oblique one ; or that disobedience 
to the moral law accumulated the ice of the poles and 
the sands of the desert, giving rise to the tempests 
which desolate sea and land ; nor yet that vicious indul- 
gence is the cause of all the earthquakes and all the 
malaria, and the blight and the famine, that distress the 
world. In fact, there is no pretence of any natural 
connection in these matters : it is not pretended that sin, 
by natural and necessary sequence, entails these disor- 
ders ; but that God, by a special act of penal legislation, 
avenges sin by deranging the spheres and depraving the 
globe. However it may flatter the poetic imagination, 
this theorv of the origin of evil fails to satisfy universal 
reason, and would scarcely merit a moment's attention, 
were it not still stoutly defended by writers of our 
time. 

Another solution of this problem, or rather a way 
of disposing of it, is what may be termed the heroic 
method, as taught and professed, and to some extent 
practised, by the Stoics. It consists in denying the 
existence of evil, in indifference to all the vicissitudes of 
life ; esteeming as equally vain what men call good and 
ill ; serenely accepting, or rather ignoring, pain, priva- 
tion, loss, and want, as things external and foreign to 
the soul, which therefore ought not to disturb its tran- 
quillity, nor discompose the supreme content, which, 
based on the soul itself, is complete and impregnable. 
Here is no attempt to answer the question, "TThence 



120 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



and why the evil of this world ? " but only a sublime 
Precognition of any such question to be propounded. 
There is no evzL the Stoics said : no evil and no good 
to the wise, in things external ; no pleasure and no pain 
derivable from them. Of this doctrine a critic justly 
remarks: "It may be sublime, but is none the less 
absurd." It is worthy of note, that the Stoic philoso- 
phy flourished most in the darkest period of the world's 
history. These Stoics, says the critic, were optimists 
indeed, " optimists at the table of Nero and in the gar- 
dens of Tiberius. It was the enormity of evil which 
made them Sophists. They denied it in order not to 
curse it : they denied it in order to conceal it from their 
own eyes. By force of pride or of meanness, they acted 
an impossible part. Wounded on all sides, wounded 
unto death, they declared themselves invulnerable. 
O inanity of wisdom ! . . . They wished to appear erect 
when already prostrate. . . . They sought to extract 
happiness from the bitterest rinds of pain, and to 
make us believe in felicity in the midst of that bath 
of blood and crime known as the despotism of the 
emperors." It is needless to enlarge on the theory of 
the Stoics. Whatever value it may have as a practical 
philosophy, as a theory the mere statement is its own 
refutation. 

One other solution of the question in debate I can 
only glance at, although, in my judgment, the most 
defensible that has ever been propounded. It is that 
already alluded to in the word " optimism." This view 
supposes that God's creation is a perfect work, and 
the world in which we live the best possible world on 
the whole ; not the best possible to the individual 



THE OLD ENIGMA. 



121 



at any given moment, but the best possible on the 
whole : all creatures considered, and all the ages of man 
taken into the account. It supposes evil to be, in the 
first place, a necessary accompaniment of finite being ; 
a condition inherent in the act of creation ; a conse- 
quence resulting from the very limitations which bound 
individual existence. And, secondly, it supposes evil to 
be a necessary condition of development and growth. 
And this development and growth — not present su- 
preme satisfaction — it justly assumes to be the true 
ideal of human life. There are some things of which 
it is no disparagement of infinite Power and Wisdom 
to say, that they are impossible even with God. God 
could not make an infinite, and therefore not a perfect 
being, — much less a universe of such beings. He could 
not make an imperfect being perfectly happy. The 
limit of nature is the limit of enjoyment ; the end of 
power, the beginning of discontent. And yet a world 
of such beings may be a perfect world ; that is, the best 
possible world to the sum of the beings contained in it, 
affording the greatest possible happiness to the greatest 
number. And that is all that reason needs, to vindicate 
divine perfection. Again : it was possible for God to 
create a world in which there should be no suffering. 
But the absence of suffering, so far from assuring the 
greatest conceivable amount of happiness, maybe easily 
shown to be incompatible with that amount of happi- 
ness which actually exists, of which the two most 
essential ingredients are progress and hope. 

On these two fundamental conditions, — imperfection, 
a necessity of finite existence on the one hand ; and 
progress, the highest good, on the other, — optimism 



122 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



constructs its solution of the problem of evil, and bases 
the proposition of a best possible world. I am far 
from maintaining that ^this theory furnishes a full and 
sufficient answer to the question we are considering, and 
all the questions connected with it. I only contend, that, 
so far as it reaches, it is the most satisfactory answer 
that has yet been given ; most truly reverent toward 
God, because most trustful in divine wisdom and good- 
ness ; most ennobling, because replete with encourage- 
ment and hope for man. 

But after all is said that philosophy has to say on 
this subject, however satisfactory and incontrovertible 
in theory, the ills of life present an inexplicable mys- 
tery still to the heart. We may talk about the best 
possible world, and may think we believe in it : but a 
great sorrow makes us forget all that ; and we feel in 
the marrow of our bones how insufficient for the heart 
is every solution which philosophy can offer of this ter- 
rible enigma. The enigma is not solved by philosophy, 
but solved, if at all, by an act of faith. Faith has its 
own optimism, very different from that of the under- 
standing, or very differently put. It is perfectly ex- 
pressed in that homely phrase, which contains, I think, 
the sum of all wisdom in relation to this matter : " It is 
all for the best." Not Seneca nor Leibnitz has said 
any thing which hits the heart of the matter like this. 

"It is all for the best." All plagues and harms that 
lacerate the soul, the war of the elements, the wrath of 
man, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," all 
wounds of the heart, all losses and deaths, are ministers 
of good : a divine purpose works in all. With these 
stones in our path, the unchangeable Love is laying the 



THE OLD ENIGMA. 



123 



courses of the house of life, strong against all the acci- 
dents of earth and all the wear of time. As part and 
product of this earthly world, we belong to the system 
of subject -nature, we are tossed in its storms and 
mixed up with its wrecks. K We that are in this taber- 
nacle do groan, being burthened/' Subject-nature 
travails in us ; but the travail is the birth-pang out of 
which is the life, secure within, tempest-proof, unracked 
by mortal throes. 

All that reason teaches of God is expressed in the 
saying, "God is Law/' All that religion teaches is 
expressed in the saying, " God is Love." Each of 
these aspects is the other's complement. 

1. God is Law. That law embraces all that is or 
can be in the universe of things, — the wildest freaks 
of chance, the most exorbitant anomalies in nature, the 
toughest spasms, the slightest incidents of matter or 
mind, storm, earthquake, fire, the shoot of an ava- 
lanche, the dropping of a leaf, the eccentricities of a 
comet, the vagaries of a dream, the birth of a monster, 
the suggestion of a thought, every stroke of good for- 
tune, every mishap that befalls. There is no accident 
in the scheme of God. What is casual and exceptional 
is as much determined as what is stated and constant ; 
the earthquake which swallows up a city, as much as 
the motion of the earth on its axis ; the ii^htnino; which 
shatters the human frame, as much as the electric cur- 
rents which traverse the globe ; the tempest which 
dashes the ship upon the rocks, as much as the earth's 
atmosphere ; the disease which lays waste, as much as 
the physical economy it invades. Life would be intol- 



124 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



erable on any other terms. More grievous than any 
actual calamity would be the thought, that calamity is 
unwilled and undesigned ; that man is at the mercy of 
a lawless power. We are compassed about with perils 
and pains ; but inviolable law encompasses them. And 
evil is not the fatal misstep of groping, reeling acci- 
dent, but the conscious, measured tread of providential 
and paternal Power, — a part of that Providence which 
is co-extensive with the uttermost range of being, and 
co-present to every movement within its bounds ; to 
which the farthest star beyond the dream of astronomy 
is not too remote, nor the smallest animalcule within 
the surmise of zoology too minute. 

Why evil exists is a problem which no philosophy 
will ever solve with entire satisfaction of all the ques- 
tions involved in it and all the minds perplexed by it. 
Pursue it, and it brings you at last to the previous 
question, Why God created a universe at all? Why 
went he forth of himself in creative action? Why, 
rather, did he not abide in himself, sufficient to himself? 
Whatever is created is finite ; and a finite world implies 
evil, because it implies limitation, imperfection. The 
imperfect striving after perfection, — this is Reason's 
account of the origin of evil. 

2. God is Love. And, because he is Love, he must 
will the best. This is Faith's theodicy. Faith does 
not reason about the limits and possibilities of things : 
it judges that God might make men happy in unin- 
terrupted enjoyment, if enjoyment were the supreme 
good. But life has something better than enjoyment. 
The best of life is the work which it brings, and growth 
by work. Prolonged enjoyment hinders growth by 



THE OLD ENIGMA. 



125 



making us content without it. Suffering furthers 
growth by the stimulus of unrest. 

Faith teaches that evil is good undeveloped, — a part 
of the process of which good is the end. It is the 
bitter, biting oil which makes the flavor of the orange 
and the peach. 

View life as discipline, and you have the solution of 
all its enigmas, and a justification of all its ills. Use 
it as discipline, and you can never be quite overcome by 
its sorrows. It is because we do not so view it and use 
it that we quarrel with our lot. Believe that your lot, 
however crossed, is the best possible lot for you, the 
only one by which the ends of life for you can be 
attained. Believe, in all tribulation and trial, that 
God has considered your particular case, and adjusted 
the course of nature to it, as if nature existed for your 
behoof ; not to gratify your selfish appetite, not to 
pamper your sense with sweets, or your pride with 
pomps, but to draw from you the uttermost that is in 
you of worth and of work. 

The contradiction between the real and the ideal is 
the standing tragedy of human life, in which all trage- 
dies and griefs are comprised. The order of events 
contradicts the standard in our minds, contradicts the 
wish in our hearts. All our jeremiads are variations 
of this theme. Man's business is to reduce this contra- 
diction by conforming his ideal, in things fixed, to the 
scheme of God, and by compelling the actual, in things 
not fixed, to take the form of his ideal. There is in 
him a power transcending all material agents, greater 
than all the forces of this world, and able to bend them 



126 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM, 



to his own behoof. As fast and as far as our knowl- 
edge extends, we push our conquests over nature, and 
become the Providence of this lower world. The re- 
fractory elements, rude Titans of the realms of matter, 
are brought under. One by one. the genius of hu- 
manity encounters these enemies, grapples with them, 
subdues them, makes them servants of his need. For- 
ests are levelled, mountains scaled, gulfs bridged; fire, 
vapor, and all deeps acknowledge the sovereignty of 
man ; heat, cold, lightning, space and time confess his 
might. w Thou madest him to have dominion over all 
the works of thy hands.'' Could he but learn to sub- 
due himself as well : could he but achieve a dominion 
as complete in the moral world as in the natural ; 
could he but chain the rebellious Titans of the breast ; 
— what an empire were his ! How vast his realm, how 
sure his sway ! No contradiction, then, between the 
real and the ideal, when every wish and purpose of 
man's heart obeys the divine law, and the steadfast 
Order reigns in his will as in his destiny. 



VII. 

THE OLD DISCORD. 



VII. 



THE OLD DISCORD. 

Among the traits which distinguish man from other 
known orders of being, we find that peculiarity of 
moral self-contradiction which we term "sin." Man, 
so far as we know, is the only being who sins : that is, 
the only moral being, the only one who sits in judg- 
ment on himself, the only one capable of conscious 
guilt. 

For herein consists the essence of sin.* It is not 
the wrong act, but the wronged consciousness, the 
offended genius, defection from the inner, holy self. 
Sin does not exist until it is perceived ; in other words, 
there is no sin but conscious sin. "If a man," says 
Novalis, "could suddenly believe in sincerity that he 
was moral, he would be so." It follows that sin ceases 
when the consciousness thereof ceases, whether the ces- 
sation result from atonement or consummate deprav- 
ity. " Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death," 
— the death of the moral nature to which alone sin can 
be ascribed. Devils (if such beings exist) are sinless. 
Possessing no higher self, they experience no internal 



* From the German Siinde: the root is found in the word siihnen, to 
expiate. It means that which requires to be expiated, the unatoned self- 
alienation, which is alienation from God. 

9 [129] 



130 EELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



discord, no self-alienation, but accept and rejoice in evil 
as their normal state. 

Within the known world, the sense of guilt is a 
purely and peculiarly human experience. No creature 
but man is conscious of wrong in the moral sense 
of that term. Other creatures appear to transgress ; 
but transgression in them is obedience to a law more 
binding at the moment than that which they vio- 
late. Where they deviate from the given track, their 
very deviations are justified by imperious necessity : 
they may seem to go astray, but they are never morally 
wrong. Amenable only to the law of instinct, their 
aberrations are all lawful, as the irregularities in the 
heavenly bodies, once supposed to be imperfections of 
the solar system and to threaten eventual dissolution, 
are proved by science to have their own law to which 
they yield punctual obedience ; a limit which they never 
exceed, and a compensation which adjusts and corrects 
the threatened disturbance. There are acts of brute 
animals, especially of such as man has impressed and 
trained to his service, which seem on the surface to 
be morally wrong because we impute to them our 
own associations, because we ascribe to them liberty 
of choice, and moral perceptions. But the liberty of 
choice is only apparent, or does not exist to such an 
extent as to constitute accountableness : moral percep- 
tions are altogether wanting. The sense of wrong is 
not in their experience : what has that appearance in 
the looks and motions of domestic animals is due to 
fear, and possibly to shame, but never, I suppose, to 
conscious guilt. 

The sense of guilt is a thing unknown beyond the 



THE OLD DISCORD. 



131 



sphere of self-consciousness, i.e. of humanity. Nature 
bears not this stain on her brow, feels not this sting in 
her breast. There is no self-questioning in nature, no 
scruple, no repentance. Stars, plants, and beasts 
rejoice in eternal innocence. They obey without a 
struggle the law prescribed for them. Impulse is their 
religion, instinct their duty : they experience no con- 
flict with opposing passions in what they do, and no 
compunction when it is done. They know no law but 
the moment's choice or the moment's necessity. The 
law in their members is also the law of their mind. 
Man alone is capable of guilt, the only being whose 
nature contradicts itself, the only being who feels re- 
morse ; who does that which he would not, and repents 
what he does. Man alone "perceives another law" in 
his mind ; the law of duty, which he feels to be the 
paramount law of his nature, — a moral statute, whose 
claim he feels to be more imperative than any instinct 
or impulse beside, and whose precepts he cannot trans- 
gress without crime. 

This, then, is the peculiarity of the moral law, dis- 
tinguishing it from every other, and distinguishing man, 
as sole subject of that law, from the brute creation, — 
that the violation of it carries a sting essentially different 
from all other suffering, — the sting of conscious guilt. 
Whence this anomaly of human experience ? What is 
the import of this sensation? Other laws may be 
transgressed with impunity, so far as the mind is af- 
fected by transgression. The penalty affects the body 
only. If the State should enact a law requiring me to 
be a spy upon my neighbor, or to aid in enslaving a 
brother-man, I should feel no compunction in refusing 



132 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



obedience. But, when I have consciously wronged 
another, my soul is troubled by the thought of that 
wrong; and the pain I incur by it exceeds, if my con- 
science is tender, the pain I inflict. What is the 
import of that sensation? what means the sense of 
guilt ? 

It means that I ought to have done differently. And 
the ought apparently implies the could ; the sense of 
obligation pre-supposes the power to act in accordance 
with my moral perception, or pre-supposes, at least, a 
belief in that power. And yet, if I go back in my 
recollection of such a case, and recall its circumstances, 
and the motive power accruing therefrom, I find an 
overpowering impulse constraining me, — an impulse 
which, placed as I was, with the moral power which I 
then possessed, I could not resist. The ought does 
not always secure the can. Moral strength is not 
always commensurate with moral perception. But the 
judgment of conscience is none the less true ; the pang 
of conscious guilt is no illusion. The moral obligation 
implies the moral power, but does not, of itself, secure 
for any given exigency the requisite degree of moral 
strength. It implies the moral power as a possible and 
needful acquirement, not as a present, fixed possession ; 
it implies it as something to be developed and perfected 
in us, not as something already conferred in full per- 
fection. 

The pang of conscious guilt is no illusion. It is a 
reasonable sorrow, and the import of it is not exhausted 
in that first interpretation. It means not merely that 
we ought to have done differently in that particular 
case which awakened this consciousness, and in which 



THE OLD DISCORD. 



133 



perhaps ? being such as we were, we could not do other 
than we did. It means a good deal more than this. 
It signifies a general deficiency of the moral nature ; 
a want of that moral soundness, which, if possessed, 
would save us from that and all similar transgressions. 
It signifies the need of repentance ; not of that one 
transgression only, but of all the transgressions with 
which we offend, of that unsoundness and defect of our 
nature whence all transgressions flow, of that general 
sin of which all particular sins are but the symptoms ; 
as coughs and catarrhs, and pains of the head, and pains 
of the chest, are symptoms of disease, which is nothing 
more than absence of health, want of bodily sound- 
ness. 

I indicate here the answer to the question concerning 
the nature of sin, — a question which the Church, or 
which theologians have needlessly mystified. Christian 
dogmatists have represented sin as a positive element in 
human nature. In addition to all other principles and 
propensities, they suppose a distinct ingredient in man 
which they call sin, — a positive something seated in 
the soul, the root and source of all the iniquities of 
human life. This view I believe to be essentially erro- 
neous. The writers of the New Testament sometimes 
speak of sin as if it were a positive, antagonist power 
in man, which arrays itself against God and his right- 
eousness. It must be remembered, however, that the 
Scriptures present these things not analytically, but 
popularly, — in language derived from the popular con- 
ceptions of the time. The popular conception of sin 
was based on the supposition of a personal evil Power 
in the world ; a conscious, malevolent, almost omnipo- 



134 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OE THEISM. 



tent agent, a Prince of Devils, to whom all the sin and 
all the evil that is in the world was ascribed. But, inde- 
pendently of this hypothesis, it was natural enough, 
and is still natural, looking at the consequences, not at 
the essence of the thing, to speak of a negative power 
in terms which describe a positive one. We speak of 
darkness and cold, and even death, as positive agents : 
although the former is simply the absence of light ; the 
second, of heat ; the third, of life. Take the last in- 
stance, — death, — and see how all languages and liter- 
atures agree in representing it as a positive, aggTessive, 
even conscious and voluntary power. Death reigns, 
Death works and walks about, and lurks and lies in 
wait, and shoots arrows, and has plans and propensi- 
ties and predilections, and acts the part of a voluntary, 
intelligent being. And yet, if we ask ourselves who 
or what it is that does all this? what is death? the 
answer is, — nothing. Death is no thing, but the 
absence or cessation of a thing ; it is pure negation. 
It is the name we give to the stoppage of the breath 
and the other vital functions. What wonder, then, that 
sin, the absence or cessation or limitation of the moral 
life, should be described in positive terms, — in terms 
expressive of positive agency and power? 

The evil of sin, the deadly mischief and misery of 
of it, are nowise abated or disguised by this view, which 
regards it as negation. The results of this negation, 
the effects of sin, are damnably positive ; and, nat- 
urally enough, they induce the conception of a posi- 
tive power as their source and cause. And this notion 
of a positive element of sin in the soul may seem to 
derive some color of truth from certain phenomena of 



THE OLD DISCORD. 



135 



human consciousness. The resistance we sometimes 
encounter in obeying the moral law, the opposition we 
experience in our efforts to perform what we find it in 
our conscience to do, but not in our inclination, might 
seem to imply a contrary element, an antagonist quality 
in our moral composition, beside and distinct from all 
the other elements and powers of the soul, to which we 
give the name of sin. But, if we analyze the facts of 
this experience, we shall find that the conflict in such 
cases is not with sin as a separate force and distinct 
constituent of our nature, but a conflict of principles 
equally good in their place, and equally essential to 
man's well-being, when working in due order and right 
proportion, — a contest between the moral sense and 
some affection or propensity, innocent in itself but 
unduly active in this particular case, misdirected, and 
intent on some gratification forbidden by the moral law. 
When that propensity triumphs in the conflict, trans- 
gression ensues. 

Sin is the transgression of the law; not a distinct 
principle within us which breeds transgression, but the 
act of transgression. What causes transgression is not 
a positive but a negative condition ; it is not any one 
affection of the soul, in itself considered, but the absence 
of that restraining principle and power without which 
any affection of the soul may lead to sin. All human 
propensities, powers, and affections are good in their 
origin ; sinful only in their perversion. All sin, when 
traced to its source, will be found to consist in the mis- 
direction of principles innocent in themselves, and not 
only so, but essential to human well-being. What one 
of the normal affections or propensities of human nature 



136 KELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



is there which man could spare without loss to society ? 
What one of our passions so ill-favored and hard- 
named, but careful scrutiny shall detect in it some vir- 
tue in disguise ? Impartial analysis will discover self- 
respect in pride, respect for others in vanity, prudence 
in avarice, justice in revenge, in mad ambition some 
breathing after excellence, in lust some color of love. 
All our vices are perversions of some good. Sensu- 
ality, intemperance, selfishness, — what are they but 
perversions of the instinct of self-preservation? Dis- 
honesty is perverted love of acquisition ; mendacity, 
excess of caution, or perverted self-defence ; even indo- 
lence, which of all the vices it is hardest to connect 
with any good principle in our nature, and which 
Lavater affirmed to be the original sin, is perhaps re- 
solvable into love of freedom. 

Sin is nothing special within the soul, but one of its 
states. Our virtues and our vices are products of one 
nature. Vice is the growth of the wild or neglected 
soil, and virtue the fruit of right culture and right use. 
The same affection which grows to virtue in one man 
may turn to vice in another. The reason of the differ- 
ence is a want of something in the one case which ex- 
ists in the other, — the want of that controlling power 
which limits the fleshly and selfish propensities, keeps 
the passions in due subjection, prescribes to the untamed 
forces of the breast their mete and bound within which 
they may act with beneficent effect, and impresses on 
the native bullion of the soul the form and stamp of 
righteousness. The want of that power and that right- 
eousness is sin, or the cause of sin; which, according- 
ly, is shown to be a negative, not a positive state. 



THE OLD DISCORD. 



137 



If we investigate the nature of that controlling power 
which is active in some men and wanting in others, we 
shall see that it cannot, from the nature of the case, be 
any thing foreign from the soul itself, however quick- 
ened by impulses from without, and aid from above. 
To suppose this would be to make righteousness exter- 
nal and accidental. This power is nothing imported 
into us from abroad, but something inherent, implanted 
in all men ; patent in some, and latent in others ; here 
born into active virtue, a beneficent agent, possessing 
the will and shaping the act ; there, unquickened, a 
torpid germ without motion or life. In its active 
state, on the human side, it is the will self-determined 
to good ; on the superhuman or objective side, it is 
God's determining grace in the soul. 

The good principle in man, the power which subjects 
the appetites and passions, and turns them into virtues, 
the fountain of the moral and spiritual life, is none 
other than the Spirit of God in the soul, uplifting and 
consecrating its affections, directing and blessing its 
deeds. And this spirit is nothing imported, but native 
in man. For our spirits are God's spirit, one light in 
many lamps, one power in many agents, one treasure 
in many vessels. The dawn of that spirit in human life 
is a moral genesis resembling the material of Mo- 
saic tradition. The natural man is a chaos of wild, 
waste powers and unorganized capacities ; a world 
without form, and void. The Spirit of God broods over 
this deep; piercing its discord, resolving its confusion, 
binding its wild forces, commanding light to shine out 
of darkness, adjusting, reconciling, assigning to each 
element its proper place and function, until the waste 



138 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



chaos becomes a peaceful and happy world. In this 
process there is nothing added, and nothing taken away ; 
the process but substitutes organization for disorder, 
peace for discord, measure for excess. 

This view of sin, as negative not positive, not a prin- 
ciple but the want of one, is charged with an import in 
which the whole scheme of religion is concerned. If 
sin were something positive, lodged in the soul, born 
with us at our birth, an original endowment, part and 
parcel of our nature, then would God be the author 
of sin, not indirectly, in the sense of permitting, but 
directly and solely. This doctrine either charges infinite 
Goodness with what is wholly and purely evil, or else 
it changes the nature of sin ; which, being in that case 
the creature of God, must be right and good, not a 
transgression of the law, but the law itself, divinely 
written on the heart. The existence of moral evil is, in 
any view, a perplexing problem. That view of it is 
most rational and welcome which is most consistent with 
the moral attributes of God ; and that is the view, that 
God has implanted no propensity in man which is evil 
in itself, and which needs to be extinguished before man 
can accomplish his moral destination ; but that every 
property with which he has endowed us is good in itself, 
and only by perversion and excess, in the absence of a 
moral and controlling power, productive of evil. 

The view is practically important as indicating the 
method and source of moral regeneration. If sin is 
not a property but a want, not a positive power but the 
absence of good, it follows that the way to deal with it 
is to educate the latent good until it gains the ascen- 
dency in us, and becomes the dominant power in our 



THE OLD DISCORD. 



139 



life. The problem of reform consists not so much in 
struggling with an inward, secret foe, as in cultivat- 
ing and establishing an inward counsellor, protector, 
friend. Struggles there will be : no character was ever 
matured without them. But they are consequences, not 
means ; they are the wreck and breaking-up of the 
past, not the source of the future ; as the pangs of 
birth and of death belong to the old life which is pass- 
ing, and not to the new that is coming. Observe how 
nature heals and corrects the evil in her kinds by 
evolving some opposite good. The diseases of the 
body are cured by the energy of the principle of life, — 
the increased action of the sound parts overcoming the 
unsound. And moral diseases are cured by evolving 
and establishing a principle of life, which shall purge 
away the excesses of passion, and harmonize the forces 
of the soul. 

The main principle of life to the moral nature is 
faith : religion is the complement of all morality. With- 
out a God, there can be no righteousness, because no 
supreme Right, — no standard and guaranty of moral 
truth. And if God is, then worship is the supreme 
ethic, and virtue true worship. Are we seeking deliv- 
erance from the yoke of the ever-besetting sin ? The 
way is not to chafe against it with frantic effort, wast- 
ing time and wasting heart in a vain and endless con- 
flict ; but to turn to the infinite Good, whose holy 
idea is never far, but greets the mind the moment it 
looks up, and turns away from self and sense. Rally 
your faith in all the ideals ; " rally the good in the 
depths of thyself." Will to believe in what is highest 
and best ; choose to walk in the light of those ideas 



140 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



which the wisest of men have proved with their lives, 
and the best have sealed with their blood. Let the 
soul receive freely into her dark mansion the sunshine 
of the Spirit ; and sin, which is nothingness and shad- 
ow, shall flee away. 

Theologians would have us dwell in the consciousness 
of sin : they measure piety by self-reproach. They 
would make the impulsive utterance of St. Paul a rule 
of conscience for all men, and have each one think him- 
self the chief of sinners. This is one of the enormities 
of false religion, and involves a principle as fatal to the 
health of the soul as the opposite extreme of moral 
indifference. The sense of sin is a necessary crisis in 
the moral education of most men ; but, the perpetuation 
of that crisis is a state of arrested development which 
plainly contradicts the divine order. It makes religion, 
instead of a stimulus and an inspiration, a burden and 
a curse. It is a cruel act of religionists to endeavor to 
force the consciousness of sin on healthy, unoffending 
natures ; that is, in effect, to make them sinners. No 
soul so pure but may find flaws in its consciousness, if 
put upon the search. The ingenuity of self-torture, when 
conscience is stretched on the rack, will always elicit a 
confession of guilt. One's very virtues are arrayed 
against him ; what was fair and pure is turned to de- 
formity and hideousness by this cruel exposure in this 
concave mirror of a morbid self- consciousness. St. 
Elizabeth, the sweetest spirit of her time, was spiritually 
murdered by her confessor ; and how many saints have 
committed spiritual suicide, — by a misdirected piety 
turning the sword of the Spirit against themselves ! 



THE OLD DISCORD. 



141 



No sin which this process detects is so damning as 
the process itself; and no scepticism can be more fatal 
than the doubt of salvation in conscientious and reli- 
gious men. No soul can heartily rejoice in God, that 
abides in this sickly contemplation of self. The office 
of religion is, not to drive us back upon ourselves with 
anxious self-criticism, but to take us out of ourselves 
and unite us to the Whole, in loving self-abandonment. 
A man must take himself for better or worse, and for- 
get himself, if possible : so shall he soonest arrive at 
the beatific vision. 



4f 



VIII. 



THE OLD FEAE. 



VIII. 



THE OLD FEAR. 



"Tolle istam pompam sub qua fates et stultos territas: Mors es, quam 
nuper servus meus, quam aneilla contempsit." — Seneca. 



In every life there are two points of paramount inter- 
est, — ■ its beginning, and its close. No life so barren, 
so insignificant, but some importance will attach to it at 
these extremities- w Twice in the course of his earthly 
career," says Jean Paul, "the humblest mortal becomes 
an object of supreme moment to those about him, — 
once, when he arrives on this earth ; and, again, when 
he quits it." 

Birth and death ! the rising and the setting of a hu- 
man soul, — alike in this, that, of all the events of man's 
life, they alone are universal, how unlike in the feel- 
ings with which they are regarded ! The one a festival, 
a gospel of glad tidings ; the other a message of grief 
and gloom in the circles in which they occur. Why 
this contrast? Why have we only smiles for the new- 
born, and only tears for the dying? Why must joy 
and welcome auspicate our coming, and only tragedy 

10 [145] 



146 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



celebrate our exit ? If either is fit subject of congratu- 
lation, by all the affirmations of religion and experience 
it is the departing. Setting aside the belief in a life to 
come, when we think of uncertainties which hang over 
this, the certain disappointments, cares, and griefs which 
await the most favored, the anxiety which rocks the 
cradle of childhood, the far deeper anxiety which tracks 
the trial-steps of youth, the sore conflicts which heave 
the bosom of manhood, the infirmities and impotence 
of age, — when we think of these, it should seem that 
solemn forebodings must gather round the entrance of 
life, and a shade of sadness mingle with the welcome 
which ushers in the new-born on this earthly shore ; and 
that congratulations belong more fitly to those who are 
about to lay down the burden of life and to be deliv- 
ered from the evil that is in the world. It was some 
such feeling as this which suggested the bitter saying, 
" It is better to walk than to run ; it is better to lie 
down than to walk, better to sleep than to lie down, 
better to die than to sleep." It was this that suggested 
to the dreamy Hindoo his doctrine of despair, which 
makes annihilation the supreme good. 

As a practical principle, we feel the falsity of this 
view of life, since the true philosophy of life finds its use 
to consist, not in profit to ourselves, but in service to 
others ; not in comforts enjoyed, but in work performed. 
But, viewed as a question of selfish advantage, one 
would say, with Pliny, that the best gift of fortune is an 
early death ! And if to all this we add the belief in 
immortality ; if we think that the soul which sets on 
this world is rising at the same moment on some other 
sphere ; if we think that its life is progressive, that new 



THE OLD FEAR. 



147 



conditions will supply new forces, and open new and 
richer fountains of being and of action, — then, cer- 
tainly, death, in itself considered, is a more legitimate 
cause for rejoicing than birth ; a happier event to the 
individual who goes hence ; a worthier occasion for con- 
gratulation to those who remain. 

But the instinct of life is deeper than all our philoso- 
phy, and stronger than most men's faith. Argue as 
w r e will, our nature clings to this familiar world, to 
earth and man, to the cheerful day, and shrinks from 
the private pass, and the nameless future to which it 
leads. Death is reckoned an enemy still, after so many 
ages of mental discipline. It is the last enemy that 
will be put under. The ancient Egyptians are said to 
have placed a larva, by way of memento mori, at their 
banquets. A larva still, at the feast of life, is, to most 
mortals, the thought of death. "The heaviest stone 
which melancholy can throw at a man," says Sir 
Thomas Browne, "is to tell him that he must die." 
No religion has yet been able to eradicate this tradi- 
tional dread. Nay, religion itself has enhanced the 
terror by representing death as the fruit of sin. Milton, 
who embodies the popular conception in his immortal 
epic, finds its origin in Hell. There the word was first 
uttered, which when uttered, 

" Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed 
From all her caves, and back resounded Death/' 

And not only is death, in the popular conception, the 
penalty of sin, but it introduces the sinner to new and 
direr penalties and woes. To the " natural man," before 
religion had made him a coward, to die was to sleep, — 



148 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



* No more, and by a sleep to . . . end 
The heart-ache." 

But religion suggested that K to sleep " was w perchance 
to dream," and scared him with thinking "in that sleep 
of death what dreams may come." 

Paul boasted, in the beginning of the Christian era, 
that Christ had given his followers the victory over the 
grave. The victoiy is not so apparent as it might be. 
It is doubtful if Christians have made any great advance 
on the ancients in their feeling about death. It is 
doubtful if they manifest even so much of equanimity 
in this respect as the stoics of Greece and Rome.* 
The larva still frowns at the feast ; an image of terror 
and gloom is the thought of death to most mortals. 

The terror and the gloom exist only in our imagina- 
tion : we shut out the light, and see spectres in the 
dark. A fixed look dispels apparitions : let us look 
steadfastly in the face of this larva, holding up to it 
the lights of reason and of faith, till we see it to be a 
phantom of the brain. 

Think of death not as inevitable merely, but as some- 
thing divine ; a process of the universal Love, a mo- 
ment in the universal life. Here is nothing monstrous 
or out of the way ; no frightful anomaly, no dispensa- 
tion of wrath ; but something of a piece with the setting 
sun and the waning moon and the falling leaf, — a part 
of the great order, a necessary link in the universal 
chain which binds all being to the throne of God. A 
true religion will adjust itself with it, —will look upon 



* The Romano celebrated the death-day of their heroes as we dc their 
birth-day ; and they called the death-day the dies natalis. 



THE OLD FEAR. 



149 



it as we do upon the parting day and the dying year, 
with minds sobered and thoughtful indeed ; for all 
changes and all endings are sad, but not with horror 
and dread. St. Francis of Assisi, who embraced all 
nature, brute and plant as well as man, with affectionate 
sympathy, included death also, as a part of nature, in 
his infinite good-will. ?? Welcome, sister Death," he 
said, as he felt his end draw near. 

Death is natural : let us hold by that. The nearer 
we are to nature, the more fitting and beautiful and 
welcome it will seem. In a primitive state, it has not, 
so far as we can judge, the terrible aspect which it 
wears in an artificial one. The notion that death is the 
penalty of sin could not have originated, I think, in a 
primitive age. The patriarchs knew nothing of it. 
Death to them was natural and right. The terms in 
which they speak of it express their entire consent. 
They call it a falling asleep, — the being gathered to 
one's fathers. 

What is it that makes death terrible ? The pain of 
parting with goods and satisfactions ; with all that we 
have learned to love and enjoy in this mortal world ; 
with the dear familiar uses of life. r ' O death ! how 
bitter is the thought of thee to him that liveth at ease 
in his possessions, to him that hath prosperity in all 
things ! " Death has no terrors for the wretched and 
forlorn ; for those who have already died to all that 
makes life a blessing. "Death," says Lord Bacon, 
"arrives graciously to such as sit in darkness, or lie 
heavily burdened with grief and irons ; to despairful 
widows, pensive prisoners, and deposed kings: to 
those whose fortune runs back, whose spirits mutiny. 



150 KELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



Unto such death is a redeemer, and the grave a place 
of retiredness and rest. These wait upon the shore of 
death, and waft unto him to draw near, wishing above 
all others to see his star." 

If, then, the delights of the world throw so dense a 
shadow on the grave ; if goods and pleasures make 
death appalling ; what remedy for such engorgement 
but renunciation? Not disuse of the thing enjoyed, if 
innocent, but moderation of the pleasure we take in it ; 
the habit of regarding it as foreign, extrinsic, transient ; 
not as the substance and life of our life. Medical art 
has invented a way to mitigate the worst diseases of 
flesh, by forestalling their action, by adopting them in 
the flesh, by inoculation. Let religion apply the 
same therapeutic. The cure for death is to inoculate 
ourselves with it, — to accept it in our meditations. 
"When life is too sweet to be resigned without a pang, 
when we feel its satisfactions to be all-sufficing, then 
it is time to die to the world in thought and purpose 
and affection ; to disengage the fond heart from the 
warm embraces of fortune ; to untwist the golden links 
of pleasure, and teach the weaned spirit to stand alone. 

Parting with beloved friends is another bitter drop 
in the cup of death. Bitter and sad are earthly part- 
ings ; but those of death are not the saddest. We lose 
our beloved none the less, though death spare them. 
The friend whom we grapple to our hearts to-day will 
not be the same when a few years have passed over 
him and us, and we shall not be the same to him. TV 7 e 
think we have him when another occupying his pre- 
dicaments comes to our side, and converses with us as 
he was wont. The dear illusion satisfies us, until some 



THE OLD FEAR. 



151 



reflective hour or some accident discovers our loss. 
In this age of photography, we are easily overtaken 
with such disenchantments, as we place side by side 
the impression of ten years since and that of to-day, 
and, looking on that picture and on this, perceive that 
time is more destructive of identity than death. The 
departed friend had left undisturbed an image which 
the living displaces. 

When the mother closes the eyes of her little one, 
and sees the turf laid upon its coffin lid, her heart is 
torn with anguish ; she thinks it the crowning grief of 
her life. But what if the death-angel had spared her 
darling ; can she retain him ? Impossible ! The inevi- 
table years will steal away her child as surely as any 
mortal disease. It is our living children that we lose, 
not the dead. Do you doat on the infant beauty which 
you fold in your arms ? Say farewell ! you will never 
see it again. "Eyes, look your ]ast; lips, take your last 
embrace ! " it is going ; it is gone. Let the portrait of 
your boy be taken at the height of childish bloom, and, 
if you and he shall live so long, look at it thirty years 
hence, compare it with what he shall then have become, 
and you will see that you have lost your child as truly, 
as irrecoverably, as if those fair locks and that guiltless 
smile had been consigned to the ground. It is strange 
to think, that the most bronzed and hardened face that 
meets us in our daily walks, — the face on which the 
world and sin have set their coarsest and most forbidding 
stamp, — was once the face of a little child, over which 
fond parents doated, and dreamed their dreams. There 
are bitterer partings than death, and more heartrending 
farewells than those which we breathe over the grave. 



152 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



And what is death? For those who reach maturity, 
what is it ? Is it any thing more than the consumma- 
tion of a process which begins with infancy, and con- 
tinues and proceeds from day to day, every day of our 
lives? We die daily. That is something more than a 
figure of speech : it is literal fact. We call it death 
when the breath fails and the heart stops. But that is 
only the last in a series of acts, each one of which is 
fatal. Our life from the beoinnino; is a constant de- 
scent into death. Why should we concentrate our 
regrets on the last step, when all our years have been 
travelling the same way ? Are the last sands that run 
through the glass so much more precious than all the 
rest? Are these all diamond sparks, and the rest all 
flint? How many golden days, more fruitful and blest 
than we are likely ever to know again, have gone by, 
and no obsequies were celebrated, and no requiem sung ! 
The death of our youth is so much sadder and more 
appalling than any other death ; but no tear was shed, 
and no funeral prayer offered, and our step never fal- 
tered, and our heart never quailed, when we crossed 
that fatal bourne. And why? Because the passage 
was gradual? It is then merely a question of time, 
of slow or sudden, of early or late. If the youth of 
eighteen were to be changed by a stroke into an elder 
of eighty, human nature could not endure the meta- 
morphosis. How much more appalling it would seem 
than sudden death ! But we see nothing terrible in it 
when the change proceeds in the ordinary way, step by 
step, day by day. We are not sensible of death when 
our youth dies in us, although that death in reality is 
so much harder and sadder than the dissolution of the 
earthly framk. 



THE OLD FEAE. 



153 



We die daily : with each new section of our mortal 
history we give up something that belonged to the 
section preceding. We are losing continually a por- 
tion of our being ; we suffer ceaseless dissolutions. 
Let the mature man compare himself with the budding 
boy, and see how much of death he has already experi- 
enced. How much of what he was has perished in 
him and from him, never to be restored ! Where 
now is the careless mirth that lit up the boyish eye? 
where the sunny peace or gushing joy of the boyish 
breast? Where the boundless expectation, the implicit 
faith, the indomitable hope, the buoyant nature, the 
unshadowed soul, the exuberant life? Is not the loss 
of these as truly death as the putting-off of the fleshly 
tabernacle ? Is it not as much dying to lose the splen- 
dor and joy of our young years, as it is to be divested 
of our mortality? The veteran, however blest with 
"that which should accompany old age," looks back 
upon his youth as a Paradise lost, never in this world 
to be regained. 

" O man ! that from thy fair and shining youth 
Age might but take the things youth needed not ! " 

This ceaseless death would make existence intolera- 
ble, were it not balanced and compensated by ceaseless 
new births. The true soul gains as fast, or faster than 
it loses. Life is constant acquisition as well as constant 
waste ; a series of resurrections as well as deaths. If 
we die daily, we are also renewed day by day. If we 
lose in buoyancy, we gain in earnestness ; if we lose 
in imagination, we gain in experience; if we lose in 
freshness, we gain in weight; if we lose in fervor, we 
gain in wisdom ; if we lose in enjoyment, it is to be 



154 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



hoped we gain in patience. If we gradually die to the 
world, it is to be hoped that we more and more live 
unto God. 

Now, applying this principle to the final event which 
we call death in the usual and literal sense ; if our life 
has been what it should be, — a constant effort for 
good and constant progress ; — it will be found at last 
that we hare accumulated more than we have spent ; 
that, though flesh and heart fail us, the spiritual assets 
exceed the temporal failures. There is a feeling, that, 
however the body may perish, life preponderates over 
death in our system ; that the bursting of the mortal 
hull will be the disengaging of a force which must still 
persist in its irrepressible career. 

There is a dread of death independent of any views 
of the future destiny, — a dread of it as something un- 
known, and differing in kind from all that is known ; a 
leap in the dark, a plunge into a new element, a sud- 
den transition into something wide of all past experi- 
ence. If death were this, — a transition from one state 
to an entirely different state, — it would destroy our 
identity, and would therefore be something with which, 
as conscious beings, we could have no concern. There 
can be no such leap, no abrupt transition in our mental 
life. Our mental life is a linked succession, a continu- 
ous series of consecutive states, each one of which is 
necessarily connected with the one which preceded it. 
Every moment of our being is the product of the previ- 
ous moment, and the parent of the next. Death, like 
every other experience, must run along this line of 
successive moments ; that is, it must be gradual. 



THE OLD FEAE. 



155 



However sudden to the senses, as a mental experience 
it must be gradual ; else it would be annihilation. As 
a mental process, it is probably so gradual that the 
subject of it can never know at what precise moment 
he ceases to exist for this world and enters on another. 
We experience daily something of this sort, something 
which is probably the same as death to individual con- 
sciousness, when we lay ourselves down to our nightly 
rest. Xo man can tell the precise moment when his 
slumbers begin ; when he passes from a conscious to an 
unconscious state. Xeither can any man determine the 
precise moment of his waking. And death is a waking 
too, as well as a falling asleep, — a waking, it may be, 
after some brief moments of self- forgetting ; it may 
be after countless millions of years. But of this we 
may be sure, that whether the interval of slumber be 
long or short, — whether it be for seconds or for aeons, 
the waking, as a mental experience, will be gradual. 
Bv degrees we lose our conscious self : by degrees we 
find it again. 

I brought together, at the beginning of this chapter, 
the two extremes of birth and death. These are but 
different aspects of one fact. Death is birth. The 
birth into this life was the death of the embryo life 
which preceded, and the death of this will be birth into 
some new mode of being. And as at our birth into this 
world we came slowly and gradually into conscious 
existence and the knowledge of our condition : so, in the 
life into which we next pass, our knowledge of that life, 
it may be presumed, will be a thing of gradual growth. 
Little by little, we shall find ourselves, and our new 
position in the universe. And as in this life we woke 



156 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



into consciousness in the arms of loving friends, so, we 
may venture to hope, our next waking will be bosomed 
by that eternal Love which provided this shelter for us 
here. 



SUPPLEMENT, 

CONVERSE WITH THE DYING. 

Who would not wish, if possible, to smooth their pas- 
sage through the Valley, who are passing before our 
eyes ? — to shed that comfort on their dying bed which 
we covet for our own ? 

An easy death depends in part on physical condi- 
tions which we cannot control, but in part also on 
mental conditions which we may control, or at least 
assist. It depends on the conduct, the converse, the 
very tones of surrounding friends. If these are sad and 
despondent, their sadness and gloom will tell on the 
dying, in that enfeebled state of mind when the feelings 
and opinions of others exert a disproportionate influence, 
and when it takes so little to bring a shadow upon the 
soul. Let the wants and necessities of the death-bed — - 
I mean its mental wants and necessities — ■ be studied by 
the living ; for who knows how soon he may be called 
to minister to those requirements in person ? On their 
careful study will depend the success of our ministry. 
This is a case in which reflection is a better guide than 
instinct, though it be the instinct of affection. 

Shall those who are wasting away with a lingering 
death, be informed of their condition, — of the nature 



CONVEKSE WITH THE DYING. 



157 



and impending issue of their disease, when recovery is 
seen to be hopeless ? Assuredly, let them be informed 
of it, if their own consciousness has not anticipated 
such communication, while yet in full possession of 
their senses. For why will we deal deceitfully with 
a brother or sister in that solemn season when the 
false shows of this world are rapidly passing away, 
and the kingdom of eternal verities impends? Let 
there be that perfect understanding between the dying 
and their friends on this point, and all points, without 
which they are estranged, and can have no frank and 
hearty communion. But, when this understanding is 
established, let every thing about the chamber of death 
wear a cheerful aspect. Let the fading ey® encounter 
nothing sad or harrowing. Let there be smiles and 
cheerful converse, if nature will permit ; and let those 
tears and pangs which cannot be controlled be con- 
cealed. Let the tones which fall upon the ear be firm 
and calm. Let no heart-rending sights or sounds dis- 
turb the tranquillity of the closing scene, no agonizing 
demonstrations embitter the last farewell. In the place 
of that stillness which the spirit craves when about to 
commit itself to rest, let no lamentations make harsh 
discord in the ear, nor the final struggle be aggravated 
by the struggles of surrounding friends. What the 
dying want is quiet, — that quiet you so willingly ac- 
cord to them, are so anxious to secure to them, when 
they close their eyes for temporary slumber. 

As to offices of religion, and the character those 
offices should assume in the case of incurable disease, it 
seems to me that the only legitimate function of religion 
in such cases is to soothe and cheer, to meet such wants 



158 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

as are expressed or well understood, and not to force 
the consideration of questions, which, unless they have 
been already considered, can hardly be considered with 
profit then. It sometimes happens, that well-inten- 
tioned but misjudging friends of a different faith seek 
the presence of the dying, in order to draw their atten- 
tion to points of sectarian theology, and to bring about 
a state of mind which they suppose to be an essential 
condition of future blessedness. Let such visitations 
and ministrations by all means be excluded, as tending 
only to perplex and agitate a mind too enfeebled for 
discussion or resistance, with no likelihood of future 
and final gain. For, of all the absurdities engendered 
by false views of God and man, there is none which 
exceeds the absurdity of supposing that the everlasting 
welfare of a human soul can depend on the presence of 
a certain idea in the mind a few moments before the 
pulsations of the animal frame have ceased. The fu- 
ture well-being, so far as it depends on moral condi- 
tions, must be the fruit of a life. Where the life has 
not produced this fruit, it is not likely to spring forth 
ripe and complete, from the pressure exerted on the 
mind in the dying hour. No doubt the character may 
be permanently benefited by the experiences of the 
death - bed ; but they must be natural experiences 
wrought into the soul by the Spirit of God through 
the proper discipline of that season, and not forced 
experiences, produced by efforts from without, and the 
importunity of dogmatic presentations. Let religion 
offer to the dying such consolations and hopes as it 
can, consistently with its own convictions. There can 
hardly be a case in which religion has not some conso- 



CONVERSE WITH THE DYING. 



159 



lation to offer to the mind that desires it. It may be 
said there is danger of deceiving with a false hope. 
This one would not willingly do. Deception is bad, 
and self-deception is bad, at all times, in all things. 
It is better that the soul should have sight of the truth, 
the exact truth, whether bitter or sweet. But who has 
the truth ? Who can be so sure of it as to know with 
certainty that the view he presents will exactly convey 
it? Our duty to the dying is to give them all the 
solace and cheer we can, consistently with our own 
expectations and beliefs, by every argument that does 
not belie our established convictions : and more still, by 
our deportment and looks and tones, to make death 
easy to the dying ; to save them from all distress which 
it lies in our power to avert ; to give them a staff and 
comfort, and words of cheer, through the way of mys- 
tery, that they may tread it with victorious step, and 
a joyful presage of light, and a freer horizon beyond. 



IX. 

THE OLD HOPE. 



IX. 

THE OLD HOPE. 

" Oh joy that in our embers 

Is something that doth live ! " — Woedswoeth. 

" At nihilo minus sentimus experimurque nos seternos esse." — Spinoza. 

Man is a yonder-minded being, an embodied hereafter. 
There are faculties, purposes, aspirations in him for 
which this life affords no adequate scope, which there- 
fore presage a life to come. Their import, it is true, 
may relate to the species, not to the individual. They 
may be but intimations of the higher capabilities of 
human life, and a better future for man on this earth ; 
as certain rudimental organs in the lower orders of ani- 
mated nature seem to be prophecies of a higher organ- 
ism, which find their fulfilment in man. Yet, even so, 
they have a savor of immortality. The strongest proof 
of individual immortality is the fact that men believe in 
it. The ancient and wide-spread faith may be regarded 
as a pledge from the Power that made us, not indeed 
that each individual soul shall, without exception, per- 
petuate a conscious identity, but that immortality is 
within the possibilities and scope of the human consti- 
tution. 

[163] 



164 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



The analogies of nature, so often insisted on in this 
connection, appear to me not to possess much weight. 
The old and ever-repeated illustration of the caterpillar 
and the butterfly fails in one or two essential particu- 
lars. First, The caterpillar, before developing into the 
butterfly, does not die, in any such sense as that which 
we intend when we speak of the death of man. Sec- 
ondly, If the caterpillar does die by some fatal injury, 
or if such injury be inflicted on the grub, no butterfly 
succeeds. And, thirdly, The butterfly is not immortal, 
but, as if by way of compensation for her double life, 
perishes before the birth of her offspring. Nature, so 
far as we can see, is not concerned to perpetuate the 
individual, but only the species. I am not aware of 
any fact in nature which favors the belief in individual 
immortality. The affirmative voices on this question 
are not to be collected from the world of facts, but 
from that of ideas. 

Moreover, the question of the immortality of the soul 
must not be confounded with that of the immortality 
of the conscious self. Most of the reasoning on the 
subject applies only to the former ; but it seems to as- 
sume the identity of the two. The immortality of the 
soul being granted, it would still be a question whether 
the soul is the continent and carrier of the conscious 
self,* in such wise that the perpetuation of the one 



* Perhaps we exaggerate the importance of this one aspect of the 
general question. There may be as much of egoism as of reason in the in- 
terest felt in the continuity of the conscious self. I cannot agree with those 
who would place the whole emphasis of immortality here, and who think 
that not to remember the I of the present life is not to live at all hereafter; 
since, then, it is not I that live, but another. It is still I in the sense most 



THE OLD HOPE. 



165 



necessarily involves the continuity of the other, — in- 
volves the recollection of the present life. Whether I 
— that is, this soul of mine — shall live again, and 
live for ever, is one question ; whether I shall hereafter 
remember my present self is another, and, it seems to 
me, a quite secondary one. If any object, that not to 
remember the present self is not to remember the past 
at all ; that, consequently, it is annihilation of the past, 
consequently, destruction of identity, consequently, not 
so much immortality, as new creation, — I reply, that 
memory has two parts, — retention and association. I 
can suppose that the ideas, and all essential knowledge 
acquired in the present life may be retained, while the 
association with the present perishes. Experience is 
not necessarily lost when the past is no longer recalled. 
Its substance may still exist without the form of mem- 
ory. What is now memory, or remembered knowl- 
edge, may hereafter be intuition. 

Leaving, then, the uncertain analogies of nature, 
and taking our stand in the world of ideas, I find there 
the idea of immortality; not a recent speculation, nor 
a private conceit, but ancient and universal as civilized 
man. What account can be given of it ? Whence its 
origin? Shall we say that the wish is father to the 
thought? But how many things there are which we 
desire, which all men desire, with no accompanying 
belief in their possibility. I find no explanation of the 



important to the whole, if not in the sense most important to self-love. It 
is still the same soul with all that earthly discipline has made it; and, by 
that discipline, fitted and endowed for its new career. This is all that con- 
cerns the city of God. The question of conscious identification (" Ille ego 
qui quondam ") is a private affair, important only to self-love. 



166 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

fact of this belief so satisfactory as the supposition of a 
truth on which it rests, and an understanding between 
the human and divine spirit, by which that truth is 
assured. 

And I find in this idea the best solution of the moral 
problems and contradictions of human life. Of these 
contradictions, the most glaring, perhaps, is the incom- 
patibility of the claims of the moral law . with the in- 
stincts of nature. The moral law announces itself in 
our consciousness as the highest law of our being, as 
that to which we owe supreme allegiance, — the " cate- 
gorical imperative." Deep in the universal soul is laid 
the conviction of moral obligation, of the binding ne- 
cessity of right. The law of duty is unconditional : it 
demands unconditional obedience. It requires the sac- 
rifice, not only of present ease, but of life itself, when- 
ever they stand in the way of its sacred claims. It 
requires that we encounter all hazards, and count not 
our life dear, in any service to which the providence of 
God has called us.* We blame the man who abandons 
the post of duty from a cowardly love of life ; the 
physician who deserts his patients attacked with infec- 
tious disease ; the soldier who perils his country's cause 
through fear. But why do we blame them? Is not 
life the supreme end to which every thing else must be 
sacrificed? So says the instinct of self-preservation. 
But no ! conscience protests against this view. There 
is something higher than self - preservation : duty is 
more sacred than life. Then what a contradiction is 
man ! What opposite laws prevail in his constitution ? 



* The illustration which follows is from Bretschn eider. 



THE OLD HOPE. 



167 



What means this sense of obligation which contradicts 
the instincts of nature ? How can his self require him 
to expose his self to destruction? Here is a problem 
which requires immortality for its solution. Grant an 
hereafter, and the contradiction becomes intelligible. 
It is not our very and whole beino; that we are to sacri- 
flee, but only the earth-life, brief and imperfect at best. 
The law of duty is not calculated for earthly limita- 
tions. Its scheme is irrespective of the bounds of 
time. The 'obedience it requires supposes an immortal 
nature. 

For not only must that obedience be unconditional : 
it must also be complete and entire. A voice in man, 
speaking with divine authority, bids him make the law 
of duty the sole and uniform law of his life. This he 
can never succeed in doing ; for he carries within him, ' 
beside the law of right, another law, — the law of self- 
ish appetite. " The flesh lusteth against the spirit." 
He who is most intent on the right does not always 
perform what the spirit wills, and what the law de- 
mands. This conflict between flesh and spirit ends 
never while flesh endures. ISo man becomes in this 
world what he is capable of being, in moral purity and 
strength. The virtue that is in him is not brought out 
in mortal action . Will it never appear ? Will it never 
become fact ? Then the supreme Wisdom would seem 
to contradict itself. The order of God is to accom- 
plish great ends with small means ; but here the ends 
are little, and the means great. What wealth of faculty ! 
What paltry attainment^ ! The only solution of this 
inconsistency is the supposition of another term and a 
longer date for the moral life, and perhaps a better 



168 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



temperature of the spirit, that shall perfect the fruit 
which would not ripen in the climate of this world. 

Great powers and small performance ; vast schemes 
and petty results ; " thoughts that wander through eter- 
nity," and a life that 

" can little more supply 
Than just to look about us and to die " ! 

Will any philosophy that denies immortality satisfy us 
with its reading of this riddle? It is true, these aspi- 
rations in man which transcend the scale of earthly life 
are not in themselves a sufficient proof of a life beyond. 
Still, the consciousness of an unfulfilled destiny, which 
afflicts alike the strongest and the weakest, in view of 
their attainments as compared with their designs, is 
hardly reconcilable with earthly limitations, if those 
limitations represent "the be-all and the end-all" of the 
soul. "Life's short sum," the poet warns us, "forbids 
the undertaking of a long hope." But who was ever 
persuaded to abridge his hope in accommodation to the 
narrow span? "Life is short and art is long," said 
the wise physician. Who was ever deterred from art 
by the known disproportion? And who ever lived to 
accomplish his uttermost aim ? What career so com- 
plete as to comprehend all that is wanted of this world ? 
We retire with an imperfect victory from the battle of 
life. The campaign is not finished when we strike 
tents. We have devised schemes of gain or ambition 
which are, still in full operation. The scholar has un- 
solved problems at which he is laboring. The philoso- 
pher is summoned in the midst of experiments he 
cannot stay to complete. The philanthropist is over- 
taken in projects of reform that are to add new value 



THE OLD HOPE. 



169 



to human life. We all stop short of the goal which 
entertained our livelong hope. 

In this abrupt termination of the present existence, 
there lies an intimation of another state and a further 
existence for the scheming soul, whose schemes the 
present has failed to realize. I do not say proof; for 
it does not amount to that. The proof of immortality 
is faith in it. Alas for man, if his faith is at the mercy 
of his wit ! Yet it is well to listen to these intima- 
tions : they help to illustrate what they cannot estab- 
lish. It is a well-known fact of familiar experience, 
that no dream is ever finished. They all break off in 
the midst ; they stop short on the eve of some further 
development. The reason is, that the law r by which 
the dream proceeds and unfolds itself does not reside in 
the dream itself, but in a life behind the dream-life, and 
including that as one of its states of phenomena. If 
the dream subsisted by itself, and unfolded itself by a 
law of its own, it would continue to unfold until it 
reached its natural termination ; and every dream would 
then be complete in itself, — a perfect whole. But be- 
ing what it is, — a mere dependency of the waking life, 
and attached by a thread to the actual world, — the 
slightest disturbance in that is sufficient to break it 
up. So we may suppose, so indeed we know, that 
the law of our waking life — the law by which we live 
in the actual world — has its root in a life behind that. 
Our scheming and our action are projected on a scale 
of the soul ; our existence as children of earth is pro- 
jected on a scale of physical laws. The two scales do 
not coincide. The scale of earthly existence is a small 
frame applied to a larger plan. It bounds that plan 



170 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

for this world: does it bound it for ever? Does it 
bound the planning and producing soul? I see no 
reason to suppose that it does. What our dreams are 
to our waking existence, that our waking existence 
may be to an inner and larger life of the soul ; and 
what we call the actual world — that is, our experience 
of it — may be but a dream of this inner life pro- 
jected on a scale of physical laws, and bounded by 
them, as our nightly dream is bounded by them in its 
narrower limits ; and what we call death may be but 
the breaking up of this more protracted dream, at the 
point where the scale of physical laws intersects the in- 
ner life ; consequently a waking-up of the soul to a 
more intense and expanded consciousness, — a con- 
sciousness which shall bear the same proportion to this 
present state that the present does to the nightly dream. 

What a miracle it is, for all our familiarity with it, 
when we wake in the morning, new-born, into the 
great, wide world of day, after being shut up for some 
hours in the narrow confinement of the world of sleep ! 
How little and nugatory seems to us then our dream, 
if remembered at all ! Only w T hen, in that dream which 
we had, some fierce passion was called into play, or 
some terrible calamity pursued us, do we dwell upon it 
still, for a while, in the growing dawn, until the impor- 
tunate realities of waking existence chase its image 
from the soul. I can imagine a waking consequent on 
death, or coincident with it, which shall give us a con- 
sciousness by so much the more vivid, a morning by so 
much the more resplendent, a world by so much the 
larger and more glorious, as our conceptions and the 
possibilities of being transcend the actual experience 



THE OLD HOPE. 



171 



of life. And perhaps every future life of the soul may 
be as a dream to that which succeeds it, and the only 
waking life in the universe be that of God. 

I assert nothing. On this subject all dogmatizing 
is ridiculous. All positive assertion is rebuked by the 
consciousness of ignorance and limitation. I stand 
with profound submission and with reverent expecta- 
tion before the veiled future which bounds this mortal 
span. It is not the light of revelation, but the candle 
of conjecture, which I hold out into the uncertain dark. 

Thus much we may affirm ; and the more we medi- 
tate the matter, the more the conviction grows, that 
this interior force which we call the soul, this scheming 
and productive power which works in us and through 
us, shaping our life in the world, and, in some small 
measure, the world by our life, contriving and produc- 
ing, — that this power, I say, does not exhaust itself 
in these productions. The capacity remains in man's 
consciousness, of further production. The scale of mor- 
tality which bounds and measures the product is not 
the measure of the power. It is not the measure of the 
soul. We die in the midst of our schemes. The fault 
is not in the schemes that they break off and stop 
short of their fulfilment. Nor is it the incapacity of 
the soul that fails to fulfil them ; but another law com- 
ing in, another force breaking through, a physical 
necessity, cuts them short. Does that force destroy 
the producing power, or only arrest its action for a 
season, as the winter stops the flowering of the plant, 
leaving the root unimpaired for further production ? 

The organism in and by which we performed our 
tasks is broken up. Are we that organism? Is what 



172 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. * 

we call the soul the product of organization? If so, 
then death puts an end to us and our work for ever. 
The particles which composed the machine may work 
again in other forms of which they shall become part ; 
but of us and our work there is an end for ever. But 
we are not that organism. No man identifies himself 
with his bodily organs, but regards these as some- 
thing external to himself, something which clothes him, 
something which he inhabits. We are not the hand 
surely, nor the foot, nor the trunk. We separate in 
our consciousness between self and each particular part, 
between self and the totality of parts. There is a 
feeling of something distinct, detachable, something 
which is not part, but whole and indivisible, transcend- 
ing organization, surviving it. 

We lived before we saw the light. Our embryo 
life may have been a conscious life : if so, what dreams 
and associations were interrupted and broken up when 
the new-born emerged from his narrow, dark world, ■ — 

"Like a shipwrecked sailor tost 
By rough waves on a perilous coast, 
Elung by laboring nature forth 
Upon the mercies of the earth " ! 

The present life may be embryonic with relation to 
some future life of the soul, and the discipline of this 
world a process of gestation, in which the great Mother 
travails with her children until they burst the matrix 
of mortality, and put on new life. The embryo state 
ceases : the life it enclosed survives. 

But how survives ? In what form ? with what sur- 
roundings? with what human or superhuman condi- 
tions? Is it here, on this earth, that we resume and 



THE OLD HOPE. 



173 



pursue our calling ? Do we re-appear again and again 
in new forms of humanity? Or do we migrate to 
some other sphere? Or does the dissolution of the 
mortal bodv disengage an ethereal form, invisible to 
the eye of flesh, which, without any grosser embodi- 
ment, contains and perpetuates the conscious life? 
These are questions for which reason and religion have 
no legitimate answer, other than a candid confession of 
utter and helpless ignorance. Every theory we may 
frame of the future of the soul is a baseless speculation. 
No conclusion which philosophy has drawn from nature 
or consciousness can lay any claim to scientific credi- 
bility. All our inquiries and soundings of this matter 
bring us no nearer the truth. We want the first and 
most essential condition of a rational theory on the 
subject. We do not even know what the soul or self 
of the individual, as distinguished from the visible per- 
son, is. The most intelligible theory that has ever 
been propounded is that of a succession of human 
births ; the soul, at death, investing itself with a new 
body, and living a new life on the earth. The early 
Christians also believed in a new life on the earth for 
the saints, but one invested with the same body, which 
they supposed would be raised and re-animated * for 

* Science protests against the doctrine of the resurrection of the body 
as a physical impossibility, on the ground that the same particles have, at 
different times, been constituents of different human bodies. I attach no 
great importance to this reasoning, and rather suppose, that, if the resurrec- 
tion of this identical body were desirable, the divine chemistry is competent 
to that result. Besides, the doctrine does not contemplate the restoration 
of every ounce of flesh, but conceives that the resurrection-body will recover 
so much of the present as to constitute essential identity of the outward 
man. But there are other weighty objections to the doctrine, which sur- 
vives only in the creeds of Christendom^ not in its thought. 



1 74 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

the purpose, and for whose millennial abode the earth 
itself would be renewed. 

There are moods and moments when the wish to 
renew our relations with this earth, or to know, at 
least, of its on-goings, predominates over every other 
feeling in our contemplation of the hereafter. The 
founder of the Hebrew Commonwealth is represented, 
in the Pentateuch, as dying within sight of the promised 
land which had been the object of his lifelong endeavor. 
When I think of him looking from the summit of the 
border -mountain into that fair Canaan into which it 
was whispered to his soul that he should not live to 
enter and take possession in person, it seems to me 
that an irrepressible longing must have seized the heart 
of the prophet to visit, in the day of their prosperity, 
the people he had guided in weakness and want, and 
to witness the maturity and power of the State of 
which he had laid the foundations, at the foot of Horeb 
and on the banks of the Nile. We, too, from the 
height of our own time, from the height of modern 
civilization, discern a future of rich promise, — a 
Canaan of social progress and prosperity, into which 
our descendants shall enter, but of which the distant 
vision only is granted to us. Who so cold or so indif- 
ferent to human weal as not to desire, in the future of 
the soul which lies for us beyond the Jordan of death, 
to see with our own eyes the realization of this great 
hope ? Who would not wish to know the condition of 
society as it will be after the lapse of another century, 
w T hen the tendencies which are now at work in human 
affairs shall have consummated their legitimate fruit? 
An astronomer, speaking of Halley's comet, which 



THE OLD HOPE. 



175 



returns to that point in its orbit from whence it is visi- 
ble to our earth after an interval of — I forget how 
many years, remarks, that, "while we gaze on this 
mysterious visitant, not without a feeling of sadness, 
knowing that its larger year outspans the cycle of one 
of earth's fleeting generations, and that, when it once 
more returns, it will tell of the victories of science, not 
to us, but to those who are fast forgetting us, the 
thought clutches by the heart, that man must be im- 
mortal." From the same feeling it might be argued, 
that man does not quit this earth ; that the life of the 
individual must be co-present to all the generations that 
come after him ; that he must realize, in his individual 
experience, all that collective humanity, in all time, is 
destined to know, to produce, and to be. 

This, however, is reasoning on the assumption, that 
the interest of this present must be the interest also 
of the life to come ; that " qua? cura fuit vivis eadem 
sequitur tellure repostos." It is quite possible that we 
may exaggerate the importance of the future of this 
planet and of human society, in relation to the whole 
to which they and we belong; that, however momen- 
tous all this may seem to us now, its importance will 
dwindle into nothing when we wake from the dream of 
mortality, and take up our new position in the universe 
of God. This world and its belongings may then be 
no more to us than last night's dream, whose intense 
interest we scarce recall in the morning, and whose 
history we soon dismiss from the mind. 

Besides, the future of this earth, — is it not in our- 
selves ? All that collective humanity is capable of, all 
that the ages to come of human existence shall unfold 



173 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

in long procession, — the whole scope and theme of 
mortal years, — is it not folded up in the individual 
soul? All that man can be is in us; and, wherever 
our being may lodge in the great hereafter, fast as that 
being unfolds we shall read the history of advancing 
man in our own progressive life. 

The more prevailing doctrine concerning the form 
and method of the future life is that of the w spiritual 
body," so called, — a finer frame, supposed to be con- 
tained within this visible, to be disengaged from it by 
death, and to constitute thenceforth the vehicle and 
dwelling of the soul. The " spiritual body," if I rightly 
apprehend it, is a more ethereal body, differing from 
this present mainly in the matter of weight, and exemp- 
tion from animal functions. The future state is sup- 
posed to be a realm inhabited by these ethereal bodies, 
and is called "the spiritual world." Whatever may be 
thought of the ontology of this view, its claim of spir- 
ituality is founded on mere difference of mass and bulk. 
But the essence of spirit consists not in levity. When 
we talk of spirituality, it is not a question of specific 
gravity, of thick or thin, of solid or fluid. A cubic 
foot of oxygen is no more spiritual than a cubic foot of 
lead. Light and electricity are just as material as 
density and gravitation ; and a body of a hundred 
pound weight is just as likely a vehicle of spirit, and 
just as much entitled to be called a spiritual body, as 
any imponderable substance. 

We speculate into thick darkness when we try con- 
clusions with the region beyond the grave. Impervious 
night baffles all intellectual adventure in that direction. 
We shall have to be content with the simple fact of 



.1 



THE OLD HOPE. 



177 



immortality, suggested by the longing heart, and con- 
firmed by the general faith of mankind. Enough to 
know that the bounded horizon of this mortal is not 
"the butt and seamark of my utmost sail;" that the 
tickings of the fleshly heart are not the measure of the 
soul's unending day. More than this is not revealed ; 
and, however curiosity may burn to penetrate the 
secret, our riper reason must needs bless the veil of 
inscrutable mystery which a kind God has thrown 
around our passage hence, and the deep, unanswering 
silence, which baffles science but fosters hope. 

The only thing that can, with any degree of cer- 
tainty, be predicated concerning the life to come, is, 
that its character, so far as our own consciousness for 
good or evil is concerned in it, will mainly depend on 
ourselves. Whatever may be the mode of existence 
hereafter, whatever the embodiment, the locality, that 
which to us is most essential in it is that which we 
bring to it of our own. Our life is from within ; and he 
who would know what his state and pursuits and sensa- 
tions will be, when this mortal is put off, must look into 
his own heart, and see what he finds there : what apti- 
tudes, what tendencies, what inclinations and desires. 
To suppose that Omnipotence — if such a thing be pos- 
sible — will take a soul out from all its past habits and 
belongings, and set it down in some new state entirely 
foreign from its bent and wont, is a vain imagination. 
But this we may hope, that the God to whom all souls 
are dear will compensate past defects of circumstance 
and means, and provide such guidance and such draw- 
ing as, not resisted, shall bring the wanderer to bless- 
edness at last. 

12 



FREEDOM EST BONDS. 



X. 



FREEDOM IN BONDS. 

The beginning of conscious existence to finite beings is 
the sense of limitation. The first experience which 
consciousness reports is one which separates us from all 
other being, and draws the boundary-line of our per- 
sonal estate. The first thing which the infant learns 
from its contact with the world is the fact of bounds. 
Its sensations aire crossed by a foreign existence ; its 
efforts are thwarted by a foreign power. Every subse- 
quent age repeats and confirms this first experience. 
We are not free, as "the natural man" interprets and 
postulates freedom. Our freedom, in that sense, is 
narrowly circumscribed. On all sides, we are straitened 
and cramped, — walled in by adamantine necessity. 

Every wish we breathe confesses limitation. Every 
wish is a feeling of restraint, a conflict between soul 
and circumstance. And wishes multiply as fast as the 
means of gratifying them. You are straitened in your 
affairs ; you desire a competent support. Imagine 
that competence obtained, and desire is as active as 
before. Your property must be so vested as to give 
absolute immunity from loss or care. Health you must 
have to enjoy your fortune ; social position, to command 

[1811 



182 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



the respect of your fellow-men. You must be happy 
in your family, happy in all your connections. You 
must live to a good old age without the infirmities of 
age. And, when every thing is fixed according to your 
desire, the end of all things stares you in the face ; and 
you find, in your finite nature, a limit which bounds 
the uttermost good that fortune can bestow. 

Every lot in life has its limits, and the limits are 
equally oppressive in all. From whatever point we set 
out, the goal of perfection is equally remote. Happi- 
ness is not the end of a line, along which our fortunes 
are ranged in different degrees of proximity : it is the 
centre of a circle ; and all human conditions lie in 
the same circumference, at equal distances around it. 
The feeling of limitation depends, not on circumstance, 
but on ourselves. With a happy temper, the law is 
easy, and the limits large ; with a discontented, fretful 
spirit, the limits are close, and the law is hard. But 
none are so happy as never to feel the restrictions 
which limit and shut in our mortal life. We may not 
rebel against our lot ; and yet the universal conditions 
to which humanity is subject shall sometimes pain us 
with their sharp restraints. Time and space, climate, 
weather, sickness, death, everywhere oppose our de- 
sires. We feel our incapacity to be and to do what 
our better instincts prompt ; we can never quite come 
up with our conscience ; we can never quite burst the 
meshes of weakness and sense. Then, too, the inevita- 
ble course of events. rushes on, regardless of our wishes ; 
and all our sighs and prayers cannot extort the least 
dispensation from nature or time. When heaviness 
weighs on our spirits, we cannot take wings and fly 



FEEEDOM IX BOXDS. 



183 



away ; we cannot escape the weary sameness and wea- 
rier changes of life. We cannot prevent the loss of 
friends and the bitter disappointments of fate. We 
witness suffering which we cannot relieve, changes we 
cannot avert, vice we cannot reform. Who so hard 
or who so wise as to care for none of these things, — 
as never to wish that the everlasting law might for 
once relent in his behalf? 

We find a limit in the strict compensation which per- 
vades all departments of life, and qualifies all the gifts 
and advantages allotted to man. One thing is set off 
against another. You can have no good, without in- 
curring the risk of some proportionate evil. You can 
have no pleasure, but some pain goes with it. Xothing 
is given for nothing ; every thing must be bought with 
its proper price. Our very existence is^not given: we 
must pay for it with ceaseless care and toil, and the 
moral obligations it imposes. The higher the condition 
into which you are born, the greater the struggle to 
maintain that condition, and the greater the cares and 
obligations which it brings. The savage needs little to 
maintain his meagre existence. His rude weapons and 
strong limbs will procure him the food and raiment 
which his fathers enjoyed. His means are as ample as 
the forest and the flood; but his wants are cheap, his 
gratifications few. The civilized man has greater 
needs, and greater pains to satisfy them. He asks 
more of the world, and the world demands more of 
him. The more we multiply the means of enjoyment, 
the more we multiply the sources of pain. If you 
build an expensive house, and surround yourself with 
splendid furnitures and costly decorations, you have the 



184 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

trouble of keeping these things in order , and the feai 
that they may pass out of your hands. You must 
burden yourself with domestic cares : for every con- 
venience which you introduce into your establishment, 
you must take some inconvenience in its train. If yon 
live simply and at little cost, you forego some of the 
gratifications of taste ; but you avoid also the cares 
which they involve. If you indulge your affections, 
form friendships, gather a family around you, and entei 
into near relations with your fellow-men, you gratify 
your social nature, and enjoy the precious satisfactions 
of love : at the same time, you lay yourself open to 
painful anxieties and poignant griefs unknown to him 
who leads a solitary life. If you lead a solitary life, 
you escape a world of care, and lose a world of enjoy- 
ment. Whatever is gained in one wav is lost in 
another; whatever good you pursue, you must pay its 
price. If you seek wealth, you must pay the price of 
ceaseless drudgery and livelong care ; if you seek 
knowledge and intellectual culture, you must pay the 
price of long devotion, rigid self-denial, late watchings, 
early risings, and a resolute renunciation of other good, 
which may or may not be added unto you. If you 
seek ease and present comfort, you must pay the price 
of obscurity and insignificance. If vou seek the king- 
dom of God, you must renounce the world; if you 
love the world, you must forego the kingdom of 
God. 

Life itself, and every circumstance of life, is amena- 
ble to the law of compensation. It is the first statute, 
— the regulative principle in all human things. It 
pervades, like gravitation, the whole economy of na- 



FREEDOM EST BONDS. 



185 



ture. Disturb it in one place, and it rights itself in 
another. If the tide rises here, it ebbs there. If the 
ocean loses by evaporation, the air gains. It always 
takes so much to effect so much. Eternal Justice 
holds in opposite scales the good and ill of life : what- 
ever is added to one scale is rectified by its just equiva- 
lent in the other. There may be occasional oscillations ; 
an unwonted pressure, a momentary success, may cause 
one side or the other to preponderate for a while : but 
the re-action is always equal to the action ; the equi- 
librium is never long disturbed. 

We find a limit in the law of retribution which 
avenges every unlawful advantage, and punishes every 
sinful act. Since the beginning of the world, no man 
ever wronged another without wrono-ina; himself. No 
man ever consulted his private advantage at the ex- 
pense of his neighbor, or the gratification of his senses 
at the expense of his morals, without incurring the 
penalty annexed to such acts. It is the underside of 
that evil deed of which the advantage sought is the 
upperside. Cut never so fine, shave never so close, 
you cannot divide the benefit from the wrong. The 
penalty is a part of the thing. Sin is a poisoned fruit. 
No art has yet been able to separate the sweet from the 
noxious, the taste in the mouth from the mischief in 
the soul. Every little dishonesty in worldly dealings, 
every falsehood of speech, every spiteful word or act, 
every sensual excess, judges itself more surely, more 
adequately, than any court can judge it. Men do not see 
the judgment, because it is not an object of sense ; but 
to deny it is not to believe in the soul. Every temp- 
tation to which I yield is so much lost to the soul's 



186 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM . 



growth. Every sin is a misstep which has got to be 
rectified. By just so much as honesty is better than 
fraud, by just so much as kindness is better than injury, 
by just so much as self-command is better than indul- 
gence, by just so much am I punished for every trans- 
gression. The Gratification sought bv unlawful means 
is never realized : it slips through the fingers ; and, in 
all the annals of crime, there was never a transgressor 
who would say that he had bettered his condition by 
anv wrong; act which he did. 

So, then, in every direction I find a limit which 
bounds my will and defines my life. I am fenced with 
stern conditions, compassed about with everlasting 
denials. My freedom is an island of small extent in 
an ocean of necessity which opposes, on every side, an 
inexorable bar to my finite power. In vain do we 
chafe against these bonds ; in vain do we strive with the 
limits which contain our little life. There is nothing 
for it but to take the conditions we cannot annul, and 
accommodate ourselves as we may to our narrow orbit. 
Is it an evil that we are thus limited, — that our free- 
dom, our capacity, is not absolute, but circumscribed? 
Behold here the method of the highest p;ood ! 

For what is the highest good? Every creature has 
its proper destination ; and, in the fulfilment of that 
destination, the highest good for that creature consists. 
But no creature can fulfil its destination, except it abide 
within the limits prescribed for it. The inanimate sub- 
stances of nature are useful only when restricted and 
confined. Gold would be useless, if less rare than it is. 
Iron is useful only when reduced to suitable forms ; 
and all form is limitation. The burning gas is useless 



FREEDOM IN BONDS. 



187 



while it flickers and flares in unrestrained freedom ; but 
reduce and control its issue, and it radiates a serviceable 
light. What more useless than the vapor which escapes 
from boiling water, in its free and diffuse state? It 
wastes itself in air; it mingles with the clouds, and 
returns to the earth as;ain according to its circuit. But 
confine it within the iron chambers of a steam-engine, 
and it becomes a mighty and beneficent power; it 
gives wings to motion, extends the spirit's conquest 
over matter, and is made subservient to all the arts of 
life. 

Look next at organized beings. Consider the plant. 
That blade of wheat is destined to bear so many ker- 
nels, according to its kind. But not one kernel could 
ever come to perfection, were not the plant confined 
within certain limits which it cannot transgress. Na- 
ture must bound herself in one way, that she may 
glorify herself in another. If the growth of that stalk 
were not arrested when it reached a certain prescribed 
stature and bulk, if it continued to grow beyond its 
proper dimensions, the vegetative power allotted to it 
would be exhausted in disproportionate expansion of 
volume, and the stalk would absorb what was meant 
for the fruit. The plant would fall short of its destina- 
tion in striving to exceed it. In like manner, the ani- 
mal economy is a system of forces and limitations, 
working together for a common end. Every muscle 
is balanced by some antagonist muscle, every organ is 
qualified by some associate organ, every instinct is lim- 
ited by some counter instinct ; and so the whole is kept 
within the type, and made to fill up the type, in which 
and for which it was formed. The bird has wings 



188 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

which lift it above the earth ; but, lest it should lose 
itself in endless space, it has instincts and gravitation 
which draw it to earth again. Beasts of prey have 
instincts which prompt them to devour ; but, to keep 
the peace of nature, they have also a love of repose 
which prompts them to rest when their hunger is 
stilled. 

So man, the head and crown of creation, has his 
type and design, within which his perfection and happi- 
ness lies, and out of which there is no perfection or 
happiness for him. If he transgresses this type in any 
direction, he sacrifices more than he gains. If he goes 
too far in one way, he loses something in another. If 
he attempts to be more than man, he becomes less than 
man. The chief and only good is to be man, — simply 
man; to unfold, in its just proportions, our human 
nature, taking heed that no part or function or faculty 
shall trespass on any other, but that all conspire to 
fulfil the perfect image of God in which our being is 
cast. This type of ours is constituted and maintained 
by those very laws, physical and moral, which we find 
in our experience, and to which we must needs submit, 
seeing that obedience to them is sure and only good. 

Imagine these limitations removed, suppose these 
laws abolished, paint to yourself that unbounded capa- 
city or that unbridled license which your fancy may 
have craved when hampered and confined by the close 
conditions of life ; you will see that nothing would be 
gained, that every thing would be sacrificed by the 
abolition of those laws against which you chafe. The 
imagination can picture no condition more appalling 
than that of a creature absolved from law. Suppose 



FREEDOM IX BONDS. 



189 



an Instance of such emancipation. Suppose the All- 
ruler to take off the restraints of law from matter. Or 
suppose but one law — - the law of gravitation — sus- 
pended, and suppose that suspension to take effect in a 
single planet only, of the solar system. Imagine one 
lawless planet. Loose the centripetal bond and set it 
adrift. See it wander madly from its native sphere, 
aimless, pathless, into infinite space. It entangles 
itself with foreign firmaments, amazing, with its law- 
less presence, the loyal orbs that move obedient in 
their steady rounds ; perplexing their path with incalcu- 
lable nodes, and missing the sweet influences of its 
kindred sky, — an intruder in orderly places, the vaga- 
bond of creation, unblessing and unblest. Suppose 
that body endowed with consciousness, how would it 
long for its old beat ! how gladly submit itself to saving 
law, and return, after fruitless and joyless roving, to 
its safe perihelion and its brother stars ! Carry this 
idea into the moral world. Suppose mankind absolved 
from their allegiance to right and duty ; suppose that 
no one finds in himself, or out of himself, any law 
restraining his inclinations ; that each one does what 
passion urges or impulse suggests ; — would that be a 
comfortable state of society? No hell within the com- 
pass of human imagination could exceed the possibili- 
ties of such a state. 

But aside from those possibilities, and aside from the 
harm to others, consider only the loss to himself which 
man must suffer in the absence of law and restraint. 
Pushing his propensity in one direction without limit, 
as each should incline, none would fulfil the design of 
his being ; none would be man, but something else and 



190 KELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 



less than man. Pursuing one object and excluding 
others, he would sacrifice his entireness to that one. 
This man would give himself to sensual indulgence, 
and become an organ of sense. That one would 
give himself up to repose, and become a stone. 
One would be all intellect, another all feeling ; none 
would be man. To be an entire man, to fulfil his 
type, is the highest to which man can aspire. To this 
end, as the vessel is conformed to its mould, we are 
placed in a framework of laws which prescribe the 
dimensions and the plan we are to fill, that no pro- 
pensity may exceed its due, but each be developed in 
harmony with all the rest, until we reach the perfect 
man. We are limited on every side, and bound in 
each particular, that we may be glorified in the whole. 
Our nature, to be perfect, must be restrained. Let us 
not chafe, but glory in these bonds, and welcome every 
law which we find in our condition and in ourselves as 
the finger of God in the uncertainties of life, pointing 
out the path which alone can bring us the satisfaction 
we seek. 

I have spoken of law as a limitation of freedom ; but 
law is also a condition of freedom. A nearer view will 
show that law and liberty are co-ordinate. We find, 
as we ascend in the scale of life, each order of beings 
more free than the one beneath it. The plant is rooted 
in the ground : it has no freedom of locomotion ; its 
only liberty consists in turning its leaves to the sun, 
and opening its pores to the atmospheric influences 
which supply it nurture. The shellfish clings to its 
native rock, and has no liberty but to open its valves 
<tnd receive the nourishment conveyed to it by the ele- 



FREEDOM IN BONDS. 



191 



tnent it inhabits. The quadruped has the freedom of 
the field and the forest : it procures its food by its own 
effort, and exercises volition. Man has the range of 
the planet, and not only freedom of locomotion, but 
freedom of thought and action : he can choose his path 
and mode of life ; he can choose between good and 
evil. Man is freer than planet or brute ; but is man 
less subject to law than they? On the contrary, the 
laws which govern him are more numerous and com- 
plex than those which govern the inferior orders. The 
plant obeys no law but that of vegetable life ; the brute 
obeys no law but those of animal nature : but man, in 
addition to the physical laws which comprehend him 
with the rest of creation, is amenable also to civil, 
social, moral and spiritual laws, which claim his alle- 
giance. 

Law is a restriction of liberty to those only who 
resist its control. The way to surmount this restraint 
is by perfect obedience ; by accepting the law so entirely, 
by so identifying our wills with the supreme Will which 
ordained it, that we become ourselves a party to the 
law. Then it ceases to be restraint, and becomes our 
own volition. We say that the plant grows freely 
when it grows as nature designed, without artificial 
restraint, according to the law of its organization. 
We call the bird free when it moves in obedience to the 
law in its members. If tree and bird were conscious, 
they would feel that they were following their own 
inclinations, although the direction of every twig in the 
one, and the motion of every muscle in the other, is 
determined by strict necessity. Man is free when he 
freely obeys the law in his mind. There is no freedom 



192 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THEISM. 

if we look for it outside of ourselves, if we seek it in 
circumstance. The inner world alone is free or capa- 
ble of freedom. We are all thrown upon circumstances 
which do not answer to our ideal ; the universe about 
us has its laws and methods against which human pas- 
sions beat in vain, and gain nothing but their own foam 
flung back upon them from the adamantine negations 
which God opposes to their hungry tide. The world is 
inexorably conditioned, and conditions us ; and we 
sometimes weary of our estate, and pine as in bondage. 
The homesick soul demands its release. Oh that we 
had win°;s to lift us above the confining tasks and 
drudgery of life ! The only way to escape this bond- 
age is to give ourselves to it with mind and heart ; to 
find our life in our task, our freedom in our obliga- 
tions ; to make our good-will as broad as our necessity. 
Resist the law of duty, and it galls you with an iron 
grip ; seek to evade it, it pursues you with a merci- 
less lash ; accept it, and it becomes a law of liberty. 
The skin which bounds this mortal body we do not feel 
to be a confinement, because it is a part of ourselves, 
a secretion of kindred matter, a fabric of our own 
blood. So, when we have come into perfect harmony 
with God by willing obedience, the law which had 
seemed to us imposed by a foreign power shall be seen 
to proceed from ourselves, to be a part of our nature, 
— the spontaneous expression of our wills ; and there- 
fore no longer a bond, but a graceful and transparent 
covering with which the soul arrays and protects its 
sacred life. We shall see the absurdity then of wishing 
that any thing in this world were other than it is. 
Every regret will be seen to be injustice to ourselves 



FREEDOM IN BONDS. 



193 



and impiety toward God. Then shall cease the feeling 
of obligation. The language of command shall be 
heard no more. " Thou shalt " and " thou shalt not," 
"must" and "ought," those stern sentinels of the soul 
that keep such jealous watch of our actions, shall be 
discharged from their superfluous posts. Choice shall 
then be our only obligation ; " I may " and " I will," our 
ten commandments. 



BOOK SECOim 
|i n t x a n a I £ Ij t % s t hux i t tr. 



PRELIMINARY. 

THE CAUSE OF KEASOX THE CAUSE OF 

FAITH. 



book sECo:m 

§1 k i ia n k I € \ x i s t % a tt % i jr« 



THE CAUSE OF EEASOX THE CAUSE OF 

FAITH. 

The earliest controversy in the Christian Church, 
though concerning a matter of purely practical import, 
involved a theory of the rights of reason which marked 
the new era then dawning on the world. It was vir- 
tually a conflict of reason with authority, — a revolt of 
the emancipated intellect against ecclesiastical rule. 
Antioch, representative of rationalism and liberty, was 
arrayed against Jerusalem, jealous custodian of old 
tradition. The remarkable thing in this controversy 
is, that the rationalistic side was the side of faith. 
Although, in relation to Judaism and Jewish Christi- 
anity, the rationalism of Paul and his party assumed a 
negative and destructive character, its real import was 
divinely positive. Opposition to authority was only 
deeper fidelity to Christ. The cause of reason was, in 
this case, the cause of faith; and the term "Faith" 
became the technical designation of rationalistic or 
Pauline, as distinguished from Jewish, Christianity. 

[197] " 



198 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



In many of the later controversies of the Church, 
and especially in those of the eleventh and twelfth cen- 
turies, we note the same coalition of reason with faith 
in the war against authority. The men of faith were 
the infidels of the Church. Such were Abelard, and 
Arnold of Brescia, Henry of Cluny, and Gerhard of 
Parma. 

And the great controversy of all, the central contro- 
versy of modern history, — that which severed the 
German churches from the Latin, — exhibits pre-emi- 
nently this relation and antagonism of faith and reason 
with authority. Luther, the arch-rationalist of the old 
Church, is the hero and type of faith to all succeeding 
generations of the new. In every clear conflict between 
reason and authority, the genius of Christianity inclines 
to the rational side. The cause of reason is ever the 
cause of faith. 

Yet no delusion is more current than that which 
identifies faith with implicit submission to ecclesiastical 
authority, and confounds rationalism with unbelief. 

The Protestant Church, while practically basing 
itself on the rights of reason, in its abnegation of irra- 
tional dogma, has never duly appreciated, or even 
theoretically acknowledged, that position, — has never 
heartily accepted the legitimate construction of that 
position, and its obvious consequences. The term 
Rationalism, w r hich truly expresses that position, is, 
with Liberal Christians as well as with the exclusive 
sects, a term of reproach, conveying an idea of some 
impious and unholy license. In the mind of the liberal 
as w r ell as of the exclusive, faith is associated only with 
authority, and dissociated from reason. Rationalism is 



THE CAUSE OF 'EE AS ON THAT OF FAITH. 199 

regarded as in principle unbelief, in practice sacrilege. 
This abuse of the term, and consequent disgust to the 
thing, is partly due to the old association of the word 
with a class of theologians now extinct, and whose 
methods and conclusions rational criticism itself dis- 
avows. But the misapplication of a principle does not 
invalidate the principle itself, nor ought the mistakes of 
a Paulus or a Strauss to discourage the application of 
reason to religion. Rationalism means that, and noth- 
ing more. Reason may err in some of its conclusions ; 
but reason is none the less the supreme arbiter in theol- 
ogy. Its errors can be consistently refuted by Protes- 
tants, only on rationalistic grounds. Only the Romanist 
can with consistency speak of rationalism in the way 
of reproach. Protestantism assumes the application of 
reason to religion as the basis of its ecclesiastical life. 
Whoever calls that principle in question, whoever ficcls 
or intends reproach in the word Rationalism, abandons 
the Protestant ground, and confesses himself in spirit 
and temper a Romanist. Whoever allows that principle 
at all, and allows it in himself, must allow it in others, 
and allow it without stint, while even rejecting the con- 
clusions of those who adopt it. Reason or Rome, — 
there is no middle ground. 

If the Protestant principle is false, then the Church 
of Rome is infallibly true in all its policy and all its 
doctrine ; and we are all heretics and doomed who are 
out of that communion, having the understanding irre- 
mediably darkened, for ever alienated from the life of 
God through the blindness of our hearts. If, on the 
other hand, the Protestant principle is true, — if we 
believe in it and profess it, — then in Christ's name let 



200 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY . 



us stand by it manfully, and follow it boldly, and con- 
fide in it frankly, and not be scared by a name, nor 
wish to scare others. When a fellow-Protestant ad- 
vances opinions which seem to us false, irreligious, 
dangerous, let us try those opinions by their own merits 
or demerits, and judge them by their own evidence or 
want of evidence, and not assail them with the anile cry 
of Rationalism, as if that trait were itself a sufficient 
condemnation, whereas in fact it is their only title to 
be so much as criticised. As Protestants, we are 
all rationalists in the fundamental principle of our 
ecclesiastical position : we may repudiate this or that 
rationalistic conclusion ; but we may not repudiate, or 
repudiating cannot escape, the principle itself. If 
rationalism be a sin, that sin have we incurred, and are 
now — 

" Stepped in so far that, should we wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er." 

There is nothing for it but to hold on, — if we admit the 
principle at all, to stand by it manfully, to acquiesce in 
all its legitimate applications, to let full daylight in on 
our beliefs, to follow trustingly where reason leads, to 
accept the results of competent, honest criticism, and 
whatever unbiassed and conscientious investigation shall 
approve. We must seek some other term to express 
that negative position and tendency in religion which 
piety deplores. If criticism in any case exhibits an 
unmistakable spirit of hostility to religion, call it irre- 
ligion, infidelity; — give it some name expressive of 
that hostility, and not one which, so used, casts re- 
proach on criticism and on reason itself. 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 201 



.1 



Protestantism is, historically and theoretically, a 
contest of reason against ecclesiastical authority. In 
prosecuting this contest, the Reformation summoned to 
its aid another authority by which to offset the authority 
of Rome, — the Bible. The consequence was, that 
the Bible came, in the Protestant w r orld, to occupy the 
place which the Church had occupied in the Roman 
Catholic. Not only authority, but infallibility, was 
claimed for it, — an infallibility extending to every jot 
and tittle of the text. An infallible book replaced the 
infallible Church. The letter of Scripture was now 
the immediate voice of God, and must countervail the 
clearest perceptions of reason and the strongest testi- 
mony of the heart. A more developed and instructed 
Protestantism perceives the monstrousness of this as- 
sumption, and steadfastly protests, and will continue 
to protest, against it. I call it an assumption because 
it is wholly destitute of either external or internal 
evidence ; and, in spite of the rooted impression of 
most Protestant communions, and hard as the assertion 
may sound, I have no hesitation in saying that this 
assumption of the infallibility of Scripture in every 
topic and word of its contents is more indefensible and 
wide of the truth than that of the infallibility of the 
Church of Rome, or the claim of her primate to be 
the vicegerent of Christ on earth. Authority is not 
infallibility ; neither is inspiration infallibility. The 
authority of Scripture is incomplete without the assent 
of reason ; and, in things doubtful and insusceptible of 
demonstration, authority can mean nothing more than 
the strong presumption in favor of a view or a fact 
from the providential position and inspiration of the 



202 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



writer. For, not to insist on the previous question, 
whether in the nature of things a writing can be, not 
only a permanent depositary, but a lasting and ever- 
lasting and exact exponent of the truth, our evidence 
that any particular writing is from God can never be 
stronger than the evidence of reason for or against the 
matter contained in it. 

This momentous principle — the very kernel of Pro- 
testantism — was clearly seen and distinctly stated by 
Locke. "Revelation," he says, "where God has been 
pleased to give it, must carry it against the probable 
conjectures of reason. . . . But yet it still belongs to 
reason to judge of the truth of its being a revelation, 
and of the signification of the words wherein it is 
delivered. Indeed, if any thing shall be thought reve- 
lation which is contrary to the plain principles of reason 
and the evident knowledge the mind has of its own 
clear and distinct ideas, there reason must be hearkened 
to as to a matter within its province, since a man can 
never have so certain a knowledge that a proposition 
which contradicts the clear principles and evidence of 
his own knowledge was divinely revealed, or that he 
understands the words rightly, ... as he has that the 
contrary is true, and so is bound to consider and 
judge of it as a matter of reason, and not to swallow it 
without examination as a matter of faith."* And 
again, "Faith can never convince us of any thing that 
contradicts our knowledge." Locke did not apply this 
proposition to the Bible. The revelations he had in his 
mind were pretended revelations claimed by enthusiasts 



* Essay on Human Understanding, book iv. chap. 18. 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 203 



independent of the Church. In those days, when criti- 
cism was yet in its infancy, and discrepancies undetected 
which are now familiar, the Bible was either received 
as a whole or rejected as a whole, and Locke was of 
those who received it. But the application of this 
great principle to Scripture is obvious, and the bibliola- 
try which refuses so to apply it — which refuses to 
discriminate between different degrees of authority and 
authenticity, between genuine and spurious, between 
poetry and history — is not of the nature of faith, but 
of fetichism. 

This sluggish acquiescence in something external, 
this slavish reliance on a letter, an institution, on the 
"says so" of an individual, is precisely the state of 
mind to which the name and credit of faith are com- 
monly assigned. This is the kind of faith which the 
Church of Rome demands and fosters. The entire 
surrender of the understanding to a symbol, of the will 
to a priest, is the highest virtue in that communion. 
The noblest saint in the feminine calendar, the holy 
and beautiful Elizabeth of Thiiringen, though clothed 
with every virtue which could merit a seat among the 
saints in any age or Church, was chiefly lauded by her 
judges for unqualified submission to her confessor, 
even to the extent of renouncing, at his dictation, her 
works of love. Her only weakness was esteemed her 
supreme merit. An intelligent female convert to Ro- 
manism in our own land was asked how her disciplined 
mind could reconcile itself with certain dogmas of her 
new confession. The answer was, "I do not exercise 
my mind upon them ; I suspend my reason on all 
questions on which the Church has pronounced its 



204 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



decision." Romanizing Christians may see in this sus-* 
pense of reason the crowning triumph of consum- 
mate faith. I can see in it only the dying confession 
of faith in articulo mortis, the religion of despair, — 
despair of the inner light, despair of divine guidance, 
and the Holy Ghost. Such confessions throw a ghastly 
light on the true nature of such conversions, — on all 
conversions from the light of reason and rational faith 
to obsolete dogma and ancient night. Suspense of 
reason ! the history of Christendom for twelve centuries 
is expressed by that phrase. "And the times of that 
ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all 
men everywhere to repent." Whatever merit blind 
acquiescence in blind authority might once have had, 
it has none now, and will find no longer a conniving 
God in the providential eclipse of the gospel. The 
light is there : if any prefer the darkness to the light, 
the darkness they have chosen is their doom. "For it 
is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and 
have tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers 
of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of 
God and the powers of the w r orld to come, if they shall 
fall away, to renew them again, seeing they crucify to 
themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an 
open shame." 

It is not a healthy and robust faith that seeks refuge 
in authority, and flies for shelter to an antiquated creed. 
In the beginning of the Anglican Tractarian movement, 
one of its leaders complained that the " Church had too 
much light." Following this hint, the more consistent 
Tractarians turned their backs on such light as they 
had, and, retreating beneath the shadow of the Church 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 205 

of Rome, escaped the annoyance altogether. It is the 
only safe course for men who do not wish to see what 
they believe. Let the blind follow the blind into con- 
genial darkness, and let the seeing gratefully accept the 
light. It is not complete illumination as yet ; it is not 
co-extensive with all our belief. There are many dark 
passages in life and religion, where we must walk by 
faith, not by sight. We must walk by faith in a vast 
number of cases, whatever church we walk in, and 
though we walk in no church at all. Man is a poor 
creature if he does not believe a great deal more than 
he sees. Nevertheless, we will walk by sight, even in 
religion, where we have sight to walk by. We will 
not shut our eyes for the mere pleasure of groping in 
the dark. We will thankfully accept the light we have, 
and strive for more. 

And is there, then, no infallible authority in religion? 
You take from us first the infallible Church, and now 
the infallible Book. To what oracle then shall we flee 
for safe conduct in the controverted questions of theol- 
ogy, — for safe deliverance from the agonies of doubt 
and the endless mazes of the mind? To the question, 
What is Truth? — the supreme question of the soul, on 
which hang; the issues of everlastino; life, — is there no 
expressed and unmistakable answer of God, on which 
the soul may repose with the certainty of infallible 
truth, and there end the bewildering quest? No infal- 
lible oracle out of the breast. The oracle within, the 
answer of the Holy Ghost which the listening, waiting 
soul receives in the innermost recesses of her own con- 
sciousness, is for each individual the high tribunal of 
last appeal. However desirable it may seem that infal- 



206 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



lible guidance from without should have been vouch- 
safed to our perplexity, however we may covet it and 
sigh for it, it has not been so ordained. We have not 
been so constituted as to see infallibly or to act infal- 
libly. And perhaps, if we duly consider the uses of 
the world and the needs of the soul, we shall cease to 
think it desirable, shall see it to be incompatible with 
moral discipline and moral growth. For what, after 
all, would be the difference between infallible guidance 
and mechanical guidance? The theory of infallibility 
is at variance with all the known methods of divine 
Providence. God does not act on the mind mechan- 
ically, but morally. He does not compel belief by 
absolute certitude, but persuades belief by fair proba- 
bility ; the individual mind, with its idiosyncrasies, 
being one of the factors by which that probability is 
constituted. It is very essential to our growth, as 
individuals and as society, that we should not have 
certainty, — that faith should be elective, and not the 
inevitable result of evidence acting with mechanical 
compulsion on the mind. It is the liability to error 
and the experience of error that make us human, that 
furnish to human nature the topics of discipline and 
the means of growth. The better part of truth is the 
search after truth. Lessing was right in his preference 
when he said, f *If God should offer me the absolute 
truth in the right hand, and the love and pursuit of 
truth in the left, I should choose the left." The abso- 
lute is not for man. 

The cause of reason is the cause of faith. In affirm- 
ing this, I but re-affirm what the wisest and devoutest 
of the Church have always maintained. But indeed 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 207 

the proposition is a necessary inference from the nature 
of man ; it lies in the very constitution of the human 
mind. Reason and faith have one interest, — Truth. 
They differ only in their mode of apprehension. Rea- 
son has the clearer discernment ; faith, the stronger hold. 
Faith has the ampler discourse ; reason, the more accu- 
rate survey. Faith, conversant with matters beyond 
the scope of reason, "is the evidence of things not 
seen." But reason, so far as it reaches, is sight. 
Reason, therefore, so far as it reaches, is the necessary 
corrective of faith. Faith is determined by accidental 
causes ; it has no necessary relation to the truth. A 
strong persuasion, but no objective certitude. It em- 
braces error as well as truth, and embraces it with 
equal affection. But reason, in its proper nature, is 
identical with the actual truth of things, that is, their 
relation in the mind of God ; and human reason, on 
any intelligible theory of God's government, must be a 
continual approximation to absolute truth. The faith 
of the Brahmin in the ten incarnations of Vishnu, or 
that of the Catholic in the Transubstantiation of the 
"elements," or the Tri-personality, is as strong as that 
of the Protestant Christian in the unity and providence 
of God. But the relation of reason to these different 
dogmas is very different. The former demand a sus- 
pense of reason ; the latter, if not an original perception 
of reason, is at least an invitation to reason to follow 
and find. 

An original perception of reason, it is not. Nor are 
any of the primary and fundamental truths of religion 
original perceptions of the mind. And here let me 
say, that, in advocating the cause of reason in religion, 



208 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



I am far from maintaining the sufficiency of reason as 
a substitute for faith in spiritual things. On the con- 
trary, it is my belief that reason in its own original 
capacity and function has no knowledge of spiritual 
truth, not even of the first and fundamental truth of 
religion, the being of God. "Natural theology" sup- 
poses that this and kindred truths are reasoned out, or 
may be reasoned out, by a process of induction, in the 
same way that the truths of astronomy were reasoned 
out by Kepler and Newton and Laplace ; that the being 
of God is as much an inference from the facts and 
processes of nature, as the earth's motion is an inference 
from the oscillations of the pendulum and the changes 
in the sky ; that the inference is inevitable, and would 
have been reached by competent logicians without the 
light of revelation and without the idea of God pre- 
existing in the mind. I do not believe in any such 
induction. I deny the logical sequence in that argu- 
ment. I deny the logical soundness of that conclu- 
sion. I deny the ability of the human intellect to 
construct that ladder, whose foot being grounded in 
irrefragable axiom, and its steps all laid in dialectic 
continuity, the topmost round thereof shall lift the 
climbing intellect into vision of the Godhead. Between 
the last truth which the human intellect can reach by 
legitimate induction and the beino- of God there will 
ever lie — 

" Deserts of vast eternity " 

Not by that process did any soul yet arrive at that 
transcendent truth ; not from beneath, but from above, 
— not by intellectual escalade, but by heavenly conde- 
scension, — comes the idea of God, even by the con- 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 209 

lescending Word, "of the Eternal co-eternal beam," 
me fountain of all our ideas of spiritual things, the well 
from which reason draws, but not to be confounded 
with it. What is tfue of the being of God is true of 
all kindred verities. All our perceptions of the primary 
truths of religion are products of divine illumination. 
All religion that is true is revealed religion. But 
revelation is education, — education of the reason as 
well as of the heart. What reason in its own original 
capacity could not discover, it may come by divine 
education to apprehend, and even, in a negative way, 
to substantiate, by removing objections and showing 
the absurdity of a contrary supposition. The office of 
reason in religion is not discovery, but verification and 
purification. Its function is to make and keep religion 
true and pure, by eliminating from the code of elemen- 
tal beliefs the human additions and corruptions that 
have gathered around it. This, faith cannot do : faith 
can only embrace, not discriminate, and, for want of 
discrimination, may soon degenerate and turn to mon- 
strous superstition, as in all historical dispensations of 
religion it has done. Faith is no critic. In its own 
nature and proper function, it chooses nothing and 
refuses nothing. Impartial and impolitic, it befriends 
itself with every enormity of the human mind. Noth- 
ing is too absurd for it, — nothing too hateful or too 
cruel. The wildest idolatries, the most brutal fetich- 
ism, the direst self-torture, the most ferocious persecu- 
tion, Phoenician lust-offerings, Aztec blood-offerings, 
Egyptian magic, Hindu suttees and gymnosophism, 
Christian inquisitions and immolations, demonology 
and witchcraft, — these things are as natural to faith as 

14 



210 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



belief in the Holy Ghost, and, but for the veto of edu- 
cated reason, as near to it now and here as in any land 
or time. It lies in all of us so to believe and so to act : 
thanks to our rationalism, we think and act otherwise. 

I say, then, that the cause of reason is the cause of 
faith, because the corrective of faith. Each is the 
other's complement. Reason requires the nutriment 
and impulse furnished by faith. Faith requires the 
discreet elaboration of reason. The one has the sub- 
stance ; the other, the form. Reason alone would give 
us a world without a God, bodies without spirits, earth 
without heaven, a day without a morrow, a way with- 
out a goal. Faith alone would give us a pantheon of 
questionable divinities, a pandemonium of unquestion- 
able fiends, an overshadowing theocracy for civil rule, 
a dispensation of dark ages without end. 

From the genius of the gospel, no less than the con- 
stitution of the human mind, I infer the right of reason 
in religion. Christianity is professedly a revelation of 
reason. The first systematic statement of it by a com- 
petent witness affirms this, and justifies rationalism in 
one word. And that word is the Word, — in the 
original tongue a synonyme for Reason. "In the be- 
ginning was the Word (or Reason), and God was the 
Word," and in Christ was the Word "made flesh." 
The eternal Reason revealed in the human ; not differ- 
ent from the human in kind, for it comes to "his own," 
and is "the light that lighteth all who ->ome into the 
world." St. Paul, though disclaiming, as "carnal 
wisdom" and "the wisdom of this world," the philo- 
sophic prepossessions of his time, is himself the subtlest 



THE CAUSE OF EEASOX THAT OF FAITH. 211 



of reasoners, — an inveterate rationalist, never more 
thoroughly in his element than when arguing the claims 
of Christianity on psychological grounds, or boldly 
rationalizing the Old Testament to rebut the scruples 
of his countrymen. The authorities at Jerusalem — 
Bishop James and Peter and the rest — stood aghast, 
and no wonder, at this "terrible child" of their com- 
munion ; they spoke doubtfully of " our beloved brother 
Paul " and the K hard things " in his Epistles ; they 
could not quote him without a caution ; but who at 
this day doubts that Paul's idea was nearer the mind 
of Christ than the views of his Judaizing critics? 
Providence adopted it; it carried the age; Jewish 
Christianity decreased, Liberal Christianity increased, 
— and will increase. 

The history of a religion, like that of a nation or an 
individual, is its verdict, the test of its proper quality, 
a revelation of its innermost idea, a public confession 
of the meaning which lay in its germ and constitution. 
Try Christianity by this test : compare it with the elder 
religions, or its younger sister, Islam. What is the 
characteristic fruit of Christian history? One fruit is 
humanity ; another, equally generic, is rationalism. 
Xot intellectual life as such, for Hinduism has devel- 
oped that, and developed it more abundantly ; but that 
form of intellectual life in which reason is the dominant 
element, — the application of reason to nature and 
society, to art and literature and life. For proofs of 
this assertion we have but to look around us. This 
Protestant Christendom, with its schools and its arts, 
its traffic and its liberties, comprising whatever is pro- 
gressive and humane in the present, and containing — 



212 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



who can doubt it ? — the future of humanity, the moral 
destinies of this planet, — this embodied, practical, 
beneficent rationalism I claim as the genuine fruit of 
the gospel, — humanity's late but how significant an- 
swer to the condescending Word for whose communica- 
tion in old Judaea the heavens were opened. 

The prominent feature of Christian civilization is 
science, that new estate of the social realm which never 
before, since the world began, attained the consequence 
and moment it now has in the scale of the forces that 
govern society. Science is sometimes found in opposi- 
tion to the Church, which accordingly rages against 
it, — the old with bull and ban, the new with the cry 
of "infidelity," and both with the same result. As I 
view it, the denial of God's light and truth in human 
reason implies a far deeper infidelity than any question- 
ing of the truth of a letter. 

It is a losing contest which theology wages against 
reason and fact. In striking at science, the Church but 
dashes her ineffectual arm against the thick bosses of 
the Almighty's shield. For what is science? It is 
simply the truth of things, i.e. the truth of God, and 
as surely a revelation of God as the gospel, — a reve- 
lation to reason of things mundane, as the gospel is a 
revelation to faith of things supermundane. The two 
revelations from one God can never really conflict. 
Whatever of seeming conflict there may be is the fault 
of the Church, which vainly opposes tradition to dem- 
onstration, and confounds the gospel with the Bible, 
which is only a witness of the gospel. If the demon- 
strated facts of science shall be found to contradict the 
text, the text must give way, and no harm is done to 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 213 



religion except in the fond conceit which identifies the 
cause of Christianity with the infallibility of a letter, 
and stakes that cause on that infallibility. 

Moreover, in contending against science, the church 
denies and rejects her own. For science, after all, is 
the offspring of the Church. Born in monkish cells, the 
foundling of religious houses vowed to Christ and the 
saints, nursed by cowled friars, cradled among cruci- 
fixes and breviaries, with men like Raymond Lully and 
Roger Bacon and Albert the Great for its sponsors, the 
child was baptized with the Holy Ghost ; and though in 
her maturity electing another path than that anticipated 
by her spiritual fathers, though adopting lay methods 
and associations, she has never belied the divine anoint- 
ing, nor betrayed her sacred trust. For science, too, is 
a minister of God, — an evangelist whose mission is to 
" show us the Father " and regenerate the world. 
With no conscious God in her perceptions, she yet 
refreshes and expands the idea of God by new revela- 
tions of the heights and deeps and infinite riches of the 
wondrous All. With no moral sensibility of her own, 
she yet deepens the sense of obligation in man, and 
solemnizes human life by showing how most exact is 
nature's frame in which that life is set, where the severe 
and geometrizing God suffers no transgression and no 
defect that is not compensated by its just equivalent, — 
where every law is self- executing, and the wildest 
excesses — the meteor's path, the earthquake's brief 
spasm, the comet's long but measured furlough — are 
all minutely prescribed and timed. With no human 
sympathy in those eyes that look creation through, she 
yet strengthens the bonds of love by a wiser adjustment 



214 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



of human relations, by multiplying means of beneficence 
and extending opportunities of good. With no charity 
in her aim, she vet evangelizes the world by closer 
commerce of man with man, by furnishing wings to 
missionary zeal, and implements to charity, by dissolving 
the rocky barriers of prescription, by developing the 
vast resources of nature for the comfort and relief of 
the suffering, and the edification of human kind. 

Does theology understand, does the Church suspect, 
what a reio'n this is which is now establishing its throne 
among us, and stretching its sceptre alike over priest 
and people? A veritable kingdom of God, because a 
kingdom of light and truth. TTho hath eyes to see, 
let him see how old things are passing away, and all 
things are becoming new. Let the clergy lift up their 
eyes, and welcome the prophet whom nature vouches, 
the fellow-laborer who also cometh in the name of the 
Lord. Let the Church make haste to acknowledge 
the credentials which bear the seal of sovereign and 
puissant fact, — the plenipotentiary of Him " who lay- 
eth the beams of his chambers in the waters and walketh 
upon the wings of the wind.' 5 And let the Church 
understand that she must either accommodate herself 
to the new dispensation, or else go down before it, as 
the temples of heathendom went down when the waters 
of Christian baptism prevailed on the earth. 

Let there be no strife between theology and science : 
there need be none. The gospel of Christ and the 
gospel of science have essentially one mission. The 
methods differ ; the end is the same. M Glory to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace and good-will toward 
men," was the mission divinely proclaimed for the one : 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 215 



to minister to w the glory of God and the relief of 
man's estate " was the calling which England's great 
Chancellor, its own high prophet, prescribed for the 
other. 

If the cause of reason is the cause of faith, then it is 
also the cause of the Church, and then theology may 
not dispense with its aid in constructing the doctrinal 
fabrics in which the faith of the Church is to dwell. 
For want of the counsel and concurrence of reason in 
time past, theology hath builded her house in vain. 
Showy and imposing structures they were, which housed 
the faith of the fathers, the Gothic style of theology, — 
those groined and carved and turreted systems of di- 
vinity, — but without internal coherence, having no 
sure principle of support in themselves, requiring stays 
and props from without, and needing constant repair. 
They resemble the material edifices, their counterparts, 
the churches of the Middle Age, — that much-vaunted 
but unsubstantial Gothic architecture, as characterized 
by Michelet, and by him contrasted with the scientific 
building of Florentine art. " The Gothic architecture," 
he says, "made great pretensions; it was ostentatious 
of calculation and numbers. The sacred number three, 
the mysterious number seven, were carefully repro- 
duced, either in themselves or their multiples, in every 
part of these churches. . . . Build by three and by 
seven, and your church will be solid." — "But why," 
then, continues he, "this army of buttresses surround- 
ing it, these enormous stays, this everlasting scaffolding, 
which the mason seems to have forgotten to take away ? " 
The very ornamentation conceals iron clamps which 



216 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



deoxidate continually, and have to be replaced. "A 
really robust edifice would cover and enclose its own 
supports, the guaranties of its perpetuity. But the 
Gothic, which leaves these essential members to chance, 
is constitutionally sickly, necessitating the maintenance 
of a population of doctors ; for so I call those little 
hamlets of masons which I see established at the foot 
of these edifices, — the hereditary repairers of the fra- 
gile creation which is mended so constantly, piece by 
piece, that, after two or three hundred years, not a stone 
perhaps of the original structure remains." 

Brunelleschi, " the sceptic, the denier of Gothic 
architecture," first Protestant in art, when intrusted 
with the completion of the cathedral at Florence, pro- 
ceeded on a different plan. He. went scientifically to 
work: he studied the strength of materials, the princi- 
ples of form, the proportion of part to part? and so 
built the Maria del Fiore. "Without carpentry, with- 
out prop or buttress, without the succor of any exterior 
support, the colossal church rose simply, naturally, as 
a strong man rises in the morning from his bed, without 
staff or crutch; and with terror the people saw the 
hardy calculator place upon its head a ponderous mar- 
ble hat, — the lantern. He laughed at their fears, 
assuring; them that this new weight would onlv add to 
its solidity." 

And thus, says the historian, "was laid the corner- 
stone of the new era, — the permanent protest against 
the halting art of the Middle Age, the first but triumph- 
ant essay of a serious structure self-sustained, being 
based on calculation and on the authority of reason. 
Art and reason reconciled, that is the new era, the 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 



217 



marriage of the beautiful with the true. . . . f Where 
will you be buried?' they asked Michel Angelo, who 
himself had just completed St. Peter's at Rome. 
* "Where I may for ever contemplate the immortal work 
of Brunelleschi.' " 

What the Duomo at Florence, what a really scien- 
tific building, is to a crumbling Gothic edifice, such is 
a rational theology to the rotten systems of the past. 
As that, in the language just quoted, is the marriage 
of the beautiful with the true, so this is the marriage of 
the holy with the true, — the marriage of Faith and 
Reason. 

It will be understood, that in arguing this cause, in 
contending for the faithful and fearless application of 
reason to religion, I am advocating a principle, not a 
particular view or result. I have wished to contribute 
something to do away the false association of rationalism 
with unbelief, as if the sole function of reason were to 
deny, and negation of existing beliefs, its legitimate 
fruit. The rationalist is not necessarily one who rejects 
the miraculous element in the gospel history, and 
denies the exceptionally divine in Christ. For my own 
part, I believe both, and claim to do so on rationalistic 
grounds. I claim to have reached these conclusions by 
no bias of authority or ecclesiastical tradition, but by 
rational criticism applied to the facts in the case. It 
may be a limitation in me to believe thus ; then it is a 
limitation of my faculty, and not an intentional limita- 
tion of the principle I am advocating. I demand an 
unlimited application of that principle ; and I firmly 
believe that the full and conscientious and persistent use 



218 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



of reason in religion will restore and confirm much that 
the partial use has discredited and disturbed. It is not, 
as I judge, the maturity and strength of reason that 
repudiates those truths, but its rawness and weakness. 
— its enslavement to negative experience, and inability 
to construe the arc of which the seemingly straight line 
of our experience constitutes so small a segment. That 
is not a pleasing view of divine operations, or of hu- 
man things, which supposes the Universe and Provi- 
dence bound to an everlasting mechanical sequence of 
events ; it is not one which will permanently satisfy 
human reason. The virtual atheism of such a view no 
formal acknowledgment of a great First Cause can 
redeem. Reason demands, and true theism supposes, 
a present as well as a former God, — a God co-ordinate 
with and exceeding creation, — a God untrammelled by 
custom, or what we call law, which is merely a human 
form of thought, and not an objective reality. This 
regular sequence of events, which seems so necessary, 
so absolute to our mundane experience, may be in the 
infinite consciousness of God a free and incalculable 
spontaneity. If miracles, as I believe, are not to be 
eliminated from the canon of historical facts, then sci- 
ence, I doubt not, will come to know them, and reason 
will rationalize them without impairing their miraculous 
character. 

I am far from maintaining that Christianity must 
stand or fall with the belief in miracles : but I do main- 
tain that Christian churches, as organized bodies of 
believers, must stand or fall with the Christian con- 
fession, — that is, the confession of Christ as divinely 
human Master and Head. Men of wit and spirit, 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 219 



earnest and able speakers, outside of that confession, 
will not want hearers, and may gather congregations 
around them which shall wait on their stated ministry. 
But such congregations, so far from being Christian 
churches, may even come to assume an attitude of open 
and avowed hostility to Christian doctrine and life. 
Things exist in this world by distinction one from 
another. Enlarge as you will the idea and scope of a 
church, there must be somewhere, whether stated or 
not in any formal symbol, a line which defines it, and 
separates those who are in it from those who are with- 
out. The scope of the Liberal Church is large ; but 
every thing and everybody cannot be embraced in it. 
The Christian confession is its boundary-line, within 
which alone it can do the work which Providence has 
given it to do. This boundary-line I have all along 
assumed. The distinction involved in the Christian 
confession is organic and vital ; its abolition would be 
the dissolution of the ecclesiastical world and the end 
of Christendom. 

One thing more. In pleading the cause of rational- 
ism, I am supposing the use of reason in religion to be 
a conscientious use, and the critical investigation to 
be conducted in a spirit of Christian reverence and love. 
The most searching investigation, actuated by ill-will 
to the Christian cause, is no more secure of the truth 
than blind acquiescence or blind infidelity. A negative 
and destructive spirit will find many things doubtful 
and many things false which a pious and affirmative 
spirit, exercising an equal measure of critical acumen, 
would approve and confirm. Criticism is not all nega- 



220 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



tive ; nor does Biblical criticism in Germany, as many 
suppose, pursue an arbitrary, wilful course, minded 
only to destroy, and never to rest till the last support 
be removed from the New Testament, and every vestige 
of documentary evidence for the truth of the Gospel 
done away. On the contrary, destructive criticism, 
not arbitrary but scientific in its method, and generally 
unbiassed in its motive, has already reached its limit. 
The work of negation — an honest and necessary work 
— has been accomplished. Little more, I conceive, re- 
mains to be discovered or propounded in that direction. 
Criticism has done its uttermost with the New Testa- 
ment. What is now left standing is likely to stand. 
What the microscopic eye and remorseless knife of 
Strauss and Baur have spared, may be presumed invul- 
nerable.. And what is it that is thus secured to us? 
Enough in those Epistles of Paul, whose genuineness 
remains unquestioned, to establish the great facts of 
the doctrine of Christ and the gospel story. Enough 
to substantiate, to fair and rational criticism, the crown- 
ing fact of the Resurrection. I do not say to demon- 
strate beyond doubt or cavil, but to make it reasonably 
certain to reasonable minds. In spite of all cavil and 
evasive interpretation, this fact must stand, and with 
it the miraculous gospel, — a divine interpolation of 
the Spirit in the secular text of history. 

Destructive criticism has done its work : henceforth 
we may expect that the work of criticism will be mainly 
constructive and restorative. Who can say how much 
may be accomplished in that line? Already signs of 
agreement are perceptible among competent critics of 
different schools. Some approximation has been made 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 221 



to settlement of controverted questions, that is, to cer- 
tainty in Biblical theology. This agreement among 
theologians cannot fail to exercise a reconciling influ- 
ence on Christian sects, and will tend to abolish the 
boundary-lines which now divide the Christian world. 
One need not despair of a Catholic Church in that sense 
in which alone Catholicism is possible or desirable. 
We do not expect or desire complete uniformity of 
administration and rite, or even of doctrinal type. 
There must always be differences of administration, of 
worship, and of doctrine. Catholicism does not consist 
in uniformity of articles, but in unity of spirit, — not in 
a common exposition, but a common confession and 
mutual good-will. Where the catholic spirit is, there 
is the Catholic Church. We may hope for so much of 
that spirit as shall serve to secure a full recognition 
of the Christian name for all who honestly claim it, and 
a friendly co-operation of Christians of every type for 
practical Christian ends. 

The time is prophetic of new modifications of the 
ecclesiastical world and a better life for the Church. 
In our own land, the unlimited freedom of opinion 
accorded by law, and encouraged by the absence of a 
national Church, has ceased to develop new sects, and 
is drawing the old into nearer communion. It is widely 
felt that existing lines do not rightly define the parties 
they divide ; theological distinctions are becoming more 
and more indistinct : the separative tendency has ex- 
hausted its force ; a unitive tendency has begun. In 
England, writers in the Established Church are taking 
the lead in liberal views and critical inquiry. In Ger- 
many, criticism, once prevailingly negative, assumes 



222 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



more and more an affirmative tone. In Italy, where 
many of the best ideas of modern society had their rise, 
and where commenced the revival of the Unitarian faith, 
the eldest faith of Christendom, — in Italy the temporal 
power of the Pope — that public offence of the Chris- 
tian world — is melting away. A Catholic Church 
without a hierarchy may become a progressive Church, 
and meanwhile furnishes the surest guaranty for the 
unity of Christendom. 

Throughout the Christian world the prevailing influ- 
ences favor liberty ; the auspices look toward an era of 
spiritual life untrammelled by priestly rule and dog- 
matic conditions, carrying its own authority in its own 
triumphant and beneficent sway. 

A celebrated mystic of the twelfth century* predicted 
a third age and dispensation of God, corresponding 
with the third Person in the Trinity. The first age, 
representing God the Father, was the dispensation of 
the Law, the age of the Old Testament, — an age 
of bondage and fear. The second, representing the 
Son, was the age of the New Testament, — an age of 
instruction and discipline, a dispensation of doctrine. 
The third, representing the Holy Ghost, is to be an age 
of knowledge and spiritual emancipation, a dispensa- 
tion of liberty and love. The first he characterizes as 
an age of bondsmen ; the second, an age of freedmen ; 
the third, of friends; — the first, an age of old men; 
the second, of the middle-aged; the third, of children. 
Six hundred years have rolled by since that Calabrian 
monk delivered this sublime burden of the Lord : so far 



* Abbot Joachim of Floris. 



THE CAUSE OF REASON THAT OF FAITH. 223 



does the vision of holy and loving spirits outstrip the 
tardy -footed ages charged with the execution of "the 
pattern in the mount." 

Six hundred years ! and the Christian world still 
waits this consummation of its destiny. 



L 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IN THE 
CHRIST OF THE CHURCH. 



I. 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IN THE 
CHRIST OF THE CHURCH. 



"Die Personlichkeit der Hebel der Weltgeschichte." — Bunsen. 



In the various attempts which during the last half-cen- 
tury have been made to construe the veritable image of 
Jesus * from the ill-digested and often conflicting ac- 
counts of the four Evangelists, no result is so conspicu- 
ous as the impossibility of any valid and final solution 
of that problem. The historical and legendary are so 
confused in these narratives, the genuine sayings of 
Jesus are often so undistinguishably blended with the 
comments and interpolations of his reporters, that criti- 
cism, incompetent to the work of elimination, can do 
no more than furnish an approximate and conjectural 
reconstruction, liable to be set aside by each succeed- 
ing critic who brings to the subject a different precon- 



* Of these attempts the charming work of Dr. Furness (" Jesus and his 
Biographers") may be characterized as written in the interest of faith and 
in a spirit of enthusiastic affirmation ; that of Strauss as written in the inter- 
est of scepticism; that of Neander, in the interest of conservatism; that of 
Schleiermacher (posthumous work just edited), in the interest of impartial 
criticism; that of Renan, of historic speculation; that of Schenkel, of 
historic probability. 

[227] 



228 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



ception, or adjusts his conclusions by a different light. 
It comes to this at last, that every reader must construct 
his own Christ from the fourfold record, according to 
his own impression of the verisimilitudes of the case. 
And, on the whole, the impression derived immediately 
from the record by a thoughtful reader, with no theory 
to support and no case to make out, is quite as likely to 
be correct as any obtained through a foreign medium. 

Were it possible to reproduce, with exactitude beyond 
dispute, the portrait of the true historical Jesus, the 
image, I suppose, would be found to differ widely from 
the Christ of the Church, or the Christ received by the 
great majority of Christians. Yet there is one point in 
this personality, in which, it seems to me, all candid 
inquiry must agree, — one fact which no criticism pro- 
fessing to treat these narratives as in any sense historical 
can set aside; — this, namely, that Jesus felt himself 
"sent" and ordained by God in a quite peculiar and 
exceptional sense, divinely commissioned to establish a 
heavenly kingdom on the earth ; that he looked upon 
himself as distinguished from other men by virtue of 
this calling. Whether differing from them, or not, in 
any metaphysical or ontological sense, he felt himself 
officially, politically, discriminated from them in this 
respect. 

If any tiling in the New Testament is historical, it is 
this, — that Jesus called himself "the Son of Man." 
Whatever may be the precise meaning of that phrase, 
there can be no doubt that he meant to designate by it 
a distinguishing peculiarity. It is equally certain, that 
he appropriated to himself the Messianic prophecies of 
his countrymen ; that he assumed to be the Christ, — 



CULBUNATION OF PERSONALITY IX CHRIST. 229 



not indeed as the Jewish people figured their Messiah 
at that time, or at any time, — but as he himself inter- 
preted the import of the national hope. 

This seems to me beyond legitimate question. It is 
not more certain that such a being as Jesus existed, than 
it is that he supposed and represented himself a being 
apart from other men, in the sense now explained. M. 
Eenan declares, that the consciousness of God in Jesus 
exceeded that of all other men.* To this we must add, 
that he was aware of the peculiarity of this conscious- 
ness. He nowhere assumes to be an incarnation of 
God. Such an idea, as M. Renan again very justly 
remarks, was entirely foreign to the Jewish -mind, f 
And when, in such sayings as those reported in the 
Fourth Gospel, r I and the Father are one," "He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father,"* he identifies 
himself with the one Supreme, he does so in the sense 
of personation or representation, not of co-entity. To 
constitute, or at least to establish, the identity con- 
templated by the Monophysite doctrine, it would not be 
sufficient that Jesus should even say in so many words 
(what he never did say), "I am God/"' It would 
further be necessary that God should say, speaking by 
some other voice of equal authority, "I am Jesus," 
— a thing inconceivable and self-contradictory. At the 
same time, it is probable that the sayings referred to 
furnished one of the factors in that deification of J esus 
by the Church which still prevails in Christian dogma- 



* "La plus haute conscience de Dieu qui ait existe au sein de fframan 
it£, a 6te celle de Jesus." — Vie de Jesus. 

f " Une telle idee etait profondement etra-ngere a 1" esprit Juif." — lb. 



230 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



tic. Alexandrian speculation supplied another ; and a 
third may be found in that view of atonement which 
assumes the necessity of an actual contact of God with 
man, in order to any complete redemption of human 
nature. 

All the varieties of opinion which have been enter- 
tained respecting the person of Christ may be compre- 
hended under these four heads : 1. Christ is mere man, 
— the old Jewish (Ebionite, Nazarasan) and modern 
Humanitarian view. 2. Christ is mere God, — the 
old Docetic, Patripassian, Monophysite, and modern 
pseudo-orthodox view. 3. Christ is neither God nor 
man, but a being between both, — the Arian view. 
4. Christ is both God and man, — the Catholic and 
genuine Orthodox view. 

I have named these opinions in the order in which 
they make their appearance in the history of Christian 
doctrine. This order is by no means an accidental 
sequence or wilful determination, but represents the 
natural history of Church Christology, which is not to 
be conceived as a human invention, but a natural, spon- 
taneous growth. 

The prevailing doctrine of the first century concern- 
ing Christ was Unitarian. Jewish converts and He- 
brew-Jewish ideas had then the ascendency in the 
Church; and Judaism, as such, was strictly and purely 
Unitarian. The Jews, at least the unlettered and 
unspeculative among them, were rigid Monotheists ; 
the idea of division or multiplicity in the Godhead was 
utterly abhorrent to their conceptions, and outraged all 
their prejudices. Their God, their Jehovah, was not 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHPJST. 231 



only one, but an individual, — a great and powerful indi- 
vidual, defined, discrete, and incommunicable ; not sole, 
universal Being, but a single, particular Being, who 
created the world in the beginning, created it once for 
all and put it from him ; not immanent but transient in 
creation, and now and for ever apart from his works ; 
different in substance as well as in power and glory. 
This rigid Monotheism contained an error which grad- 
ually undermined it. It necessitated in philosophic 
minds the conception of an intermediate being between 
God and his works, which became, as we shall see, a 
middle term or point of transition between Hebrew 
Jehovism and Trinitarian theism. 

Meanwhile, that class of Jews w T ho for the most part 
embraced Christianity untinctured by such speculations, 
received it as fulfilment of their national prophecies. 
Christ to them was the Beloved in whom God was well 
pleased, the national Messiah, — Son of God, not in the 
sense of generation, but in the sense of election and 
divine favor. God was in heaven, and man on the 
earth : nothing could bridge the distance between them. 
The risen Christ was gone to God and would soon 
return to judge the world, and establish his throne on the 
earth. This was the earliest doctrine concerning Christ, 
the Jew-Christian doctrine, the Christology of the 
apostles. The doctrine was Unitarian ; it distinguished 
broadly between God and Christ ; — no hint, as yet, of 
an Athanasian Trinity. It was the doctrine of the first 
century. There is no Christian writing, whose date can 
be proved anterior to the close of that century, which 
recognizes a different doctrine, unless it be as a heresy 
to be repudiated. The Book of Revelation, which 



232 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



recent criticism assigns to the year 69, knows nothing 
of a God-Christ, but speaks of the Lamb as entirely 
distinct from God, — symbol of the mediatorial office. 

But when, with the fall of Jerusalem, the Palestinian 
Jews lost their influence in the Church, and Gentile 
tendencies and Gentile conceptions gradually obtained 
the ascendency, a new phase of the doctrine concerning 
Christ, diametrically opposed to the foregoing, and rep- 
resenting the contrary extreme, developed itself; a 
view which, overlooking his Messianic character, denied 
the proper humanity of Jesus, and affirmed him to be 
"very God ; " God in a human body, — that body his 
only human attribute. Some* even went the length 
of denying to that body material consistency : it was no 
true body, but an apparition; — the visible Christ an 
apparition with which, through the medium of their 
deluded senses, God acted on the thoughts and faith of 
mankind. Others, who allowed the fleshly body, de- 
nied the human soul, and all the other attributes of 
humanity. They knew no difference between Christ 
and God : these were only different names for one and 
the same person. 

This view, known as Patripassian in relation to 
Christ, as Monarchian in relation to God, prevailed 
especially in the Western portion of the Church. Both 
West and East meanwhile united in the common con- 
fession of three sanctities, — Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit. But in the West the Monarchian view of the 
divine nature regarded these three, not as separate 
persons, but only as different names for the one God. 



* TheDocetae. 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 233 



In the East, on the other hand, theological speculation 
inclined to hypostatize Son and Spirit, while at the 
same time it recognized a human nature in the Christ. 

And now comes in that most important element 
in ecclesiastical Christology, as elaborated by eastern 
theologians, the idea of the Logos, — a kind of second- 
ary Deity, — whose origin requires a word of explana- 
tion. 

We observe in the animal kingdom a regular grada- 
tion of being, in descending series from man through 
the simile and other mammals and vertebrates ; through 
serpents, mollusks, medusa?, down to the rhizopod, or 
whatever may be the lowest term and extreme limit of 
animal nature. Analogy suggests a similar gradation 
in the spiritual world, — an ascending series reaching 
up from man to God. But the supposition of such a 
series is contradicted by the very idea of an Infinite Be- 
ing. We may push our scale up through the heavenly 
principalities, from angel to archangel, from cherub to 
seraph; but the highest finite is still a creature, — -it 
had a beginning, an origin in time ; between it and the 
uncreated there is still a gulf, which creation (as the 
Jews understood creation, and as most Christians under- 
stand it) cannot bridge. So long as the Infinite is 
conceived as a separate Being, the topmost round of 
your ascending scale, the highest finite is logically no 
nearer the Infinite than the lowest. 

To bridge this gulf, to bring the Godhead into such 
connection and communication with the worlds, — espe- 
cially the human world, — as religion craved, Jewish 
philosophy had recourse to the supposition of an inter- 
mediate agent ; a power intervening between God and 



234 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY « 



creature, and connecting the two, — Wisdom, or the 
Word (Logos) . This conception, not yet hypostatized, 
is shown to have originated in the Jewish mind * before 
the Christian era, and independent of Platonism, to 
which it has usually been referred. 

Christian theology applied this conception to the 
Messiah, using the term "Son" as convertible with 
" Word." The Christ was the incarnate " Word." But 
now, though the reason of this conception seemed to 
imply the eternity of the Word, a question arose : Was 
the Son, supposed to be incarnate in Jesus, created or 
uncreated ? The Arian controversy concerned precisely 
this point. Arius, considering the' matter from the 
ground of the understanding, maintained that the Son 
was a creature. Otherwise, he said, you must either 
suppose two original divine essences (ditheism), or else, 
if you substitute ? " generation " for " creation," you sup- 
pose with the Gnostics a partition of the divine essence. 
Accordingly, the Christ of the Arian view is neither 
God nor man, but a being intermediate between the 
two. And this is the third of the four hypotheses con- 
cerning the nature of Christ. 

But Arianism leaves the chasm unatoned. If the 
Son is a creature, then (it was urged) there is still the 
infinite distance between God and man. But, in order 
that man may be redeemed, Divinity must be in imme- 
diate contact with humanity. God and man must unite 
in one person. To meet this difficulty, the Orthodox 
claimed that the Son was not created, but generated, and 



* See an excellent dissertation on this subject by Michel Nicolas: "Dea 
Doctrines Religieuses des Juifs." 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IX CHRIST. 235 



that from all eternity. Consequently, the Son is of 
the substance of the Father (jhomousion) , and there 
never was a time when the Son was not. Both parties 
held that the Logos was incarnate in Jesus. According 
to one, it was the incarnation of a creature, leaving a 
void between God and man. According to the other, 
it was the incarnation of an uncreated, eternal and di- 
vine Power, whereby the void is filled ; man being, in 
Christ, in immediate contact with God.* 

Arian Christology triumphed for a time : but Atha- 
nasius, the bulwark of philosophic Christianity, the hope 
of the Church, was inflexible. His single indomitable 
will decided the destinies of Christian theosophy. The 
Homousian doctrine, already approved by the Council 
of Xicasa in 325, was re-affirmed and applied to the 
Spirit as well as the Son at the second oecumenical 
Council, assembled at Constantinople in 381, when the 
Trinitarian creed, as we now have it, was adopted and 
established. 

Another question remained to be considered, and 
another half-century was spent in discussing it. Grant- 
ing the complete Deity of the Son or Divine Word, how 



* The fallacy of this conclusion is very transparent. Allowing that God 
is exceptionally present, in the coarse, materialistic sense supposed, with the 
man Jesus; still. Jesus was an individual, and being thus excepted, and ab- 
normally possessed, there is a gulf between him and other individuals, which 
the Trinitarian theory leaves unhTled, and which only the dogma of Tran- 
substantiation, affirming the actual, material participation of Christ (that is, 
in the Trinitarian view, of God) by believers in the Eucharist, can bridge. 
Transubstantiation is the logical complement of that materialistic view of 
atonement by substantial contact of God, conceived as individual, with a 
certain human individual. 



236 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



is that Deity united to humanity in Jesus Christ ? How 
do God and man in Christ consist together ? On this 
point, two parties were opposed to each other in mutual 
mad strife. One party would merge the human in the 
divine, and know no Christ but unmixed God. The 
other demanded the human nature undivided and unim- 
paired. The controversy was, in some sort and in some 
of its stages, a feud between the intelligent, refined, 
and conscientious ecclesiastics on one side, and the igno- 
rant, rude mob, led on by the turbulent and unprincipled 
Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, on the other. Thoughtful 
men, like isestorius, while admitting the deity of Christ 
in the sense of the creed of Niceea, stumbled at such 
conceptions as that expressed by the phrase " Mother 
of God," applied to Mary. They protested that "a 
child of two years old " was no God. But the mob 
of ecclesiastics rejoiced in such views, and, headed by 
Cyril, who brought a band of ruffians to the Council 
of Ephesus for that purpose, with intimidation and in- 
trigue enforced their adoption by that Council, A.D. 
431, together with the doctrine of the one undivided 
person of Christ. 

But wisdom and order finally prevailed. The attempt 
to force on the reluctant Church the Monophysite doc- 
trine — the doctrine of one nature in Christ, and that 
nature the divine — was foiled at every turn ; and, at 
last, the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, decided that two 
natures, a human and divine, subsist together in Christ, 
without conflict or confusion, each doing its own work, 
each preserving its own property, and both combining 
in one appearance and one effect. In vain the Mono- 
physite party struggled a century longer, under different 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 237 



pretexts, with various devices, to overthrow the decision 
of this Council : it continued to be the Orthodox faith. 
As such it was re-affirmed by another Council at Con- 
stantinople (fifth oecumenical, 553), a century later; 
and when, in the seventh century, the question came up 
in another form, — the question of one or two wills in 
Christ, — a sixth Council (sixth oecumenical, Constanti- 
nople, 680) decided, in perfect agreement with that of 
Chalcedon, that two wills were united in Christ, without 
schism and without confusion, — ' ? the human invariably 
subject to the divine." 

That final decision of the Council of Chalcedon 
has never been set aside, it remains to this day the 
Orthodox doctrine. Very different, indeed, from the 
would-be Orthodoxy which overlooks or postpones 
the humanity of Christ. The true significance of that 
decision is not generally understood. It is the most 
comprehensive view that has ever been propounded 
respecting the person of Jesus. While it acknowl- 
edges the divine origin and authoritv of the Christian 
dispensation, and gives assurance that this mighty agent 
in the education of the human race is no accident or 
human invention, — not born, as the Scripture says, 
"of the will of the flesh, or the will of man, but of 
God ; " that God himself conducts the education of man, 
and is spiritually, as well as providentially, immanent 
in this human world, — it also declares, that man is the 
medium, as well as the object, of this dispensation, — 
of this system of divine education ; that the highest 
revelation and expression of the Godhead is man ; that 
human nature, in its purity and truth, embodies the 
divine. The creed of Xicasa, the first authoritative step 



238 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



in the formation of the doctrine concerning Christ, de- 
clares that the Word made flesh in Jesus is of one sub- 
stance with the Father. This statement is one which 
concerns human nature as well as the divine. If, on 
the one hand, it represents God as self-communicating, 
as passing out of self in action and revelation, contrary 
to the Hebrew idea which made God an isolated, incom- 
municable individuality ; on the other hand, it represents 
man as partaker of the divine nature, as the vehicle 
and manifestation of Godhead. For the Son of Man is 
humanity's type ; " the Lord from heaven " is human 
nature in its heavenly image. K Christ," said Irenaeus, 
"became what we are, that we might become what he 
is." We cannot be too thankful, that the Athanasian 
view in this Council prevailed against the Arian, which 
recognizes no divinity in man. 

The same view was more fully developed and more 
adequately expressed, although unconsciously perhaps 
to those who framed them, in the formulas of the Coun- 
cil of Chalcedon ; the substance of which is, that God 
and man are one in Christ, and the deep interior sense 
of which is, that God and man are one, — that human 
nature is in real communion with the divine. What 
was true of Christ historically is potentially true of all 
men. There is nothing between God and man but 
man's self- alienation through waywardness and sin. 
The most liberal and radical of modern theologians, 
the late Dr. Baur of Tubingen, does but re-affirm the 
decisions of the Councils and the Orthodoxy of the 
Church, when he declares that M the most essential and 
distinctive doctrine of Christianity is, that God became 
man in Christ ; " and when he states, as the sense of the 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 



239 



dogma of the Trinity, that Pf God and man are one in 
the self-consciousness of the Spirit." 

It must not, however, be supposed, that this interpre- 
tation of the doctrine of Chalcedon was popularly re- 
ceived and understood, or even that the doctrine itself 
of the two natures in Christ, though established by 
Council, was the commonly received view, and the one 
w T hich practically prevailed in the middle age. The in- 
terior sense of that decision was far in advance of the 
consciousness of the Church, in that and subsequent 
times. The humanity of Christ was sunk in oblivion; 
the two natures were merged in one, — that one the su- 
perhuman and divine. Christ was God, and only God, 
in the popular conception of that and the following ages 
of the Church. There was no wilfulness in this, and 
no mishap. There were good and weighty reasons for 
it in the nature of man and the circumstances of the 
time. We may call it a corruption of Christian doc- 
trine : only let us understand that this corruption was 
not designed, but providential, — a providential phase 
of Christian development, a necessary stage in the his- 
tory of religion ; necessary in the counsels of the Spirit, 
necessary in human experience. No doubt it satisfied a 
real want of the soul. Whether it was that the Chris- 
tian religion obtained thereby an authority and sanction, 
which its moral superiority alone would not have secured 
to it ; or whether the human mind required and still 
requires in the God of its worship a more definite and 
appreciable object than it finds in the proposition, "God 
is spirit," — an historical and human God, — whatever 
the occasion and cause, no doubt the general prevalence 
of this conception of Christ as God is justified by the 



240 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



moral and spiritual needs of mankind. I must suppose 
a providential order, a divine method and reason, in it. 
But observe, that, when Christ is declared to be God, 
that declaration is, properly considered, a definition, not 
of Christ, but of God. The rule is to define the less 
known by means of the more known. Of Christ we 
have some definite knowledge from the record of the 
Xew Testament. Of God we know nothing except by 
hypothesis or faith, and can apprehend nothing except 
by illustration. The unknown God may be made more 
intelligible by identifying him with the known historical 
character of the evangelical record ; but the known his- 
torical character is made no clearer by identifying him 
with the unknown God. If a chemist should define 
electricity by saying, w It is the principle of life in the 
world of spirits," he would give me no clearer idea of 
electricity, whatever he might of the life-principle of 
the spirit-world. To say that Christ is God may bring 
God nearer to my apprehension : but, as to Christ, this 
saying but puts him further from me ; and, instead of 
a genuine human life, a life of struggle and of suffering, 
— the life of one K who was tempted in all points as we 
are," — it gives us a spectral illusion, at best a dramatic 
exhibition, a part enacted by Omnipotence in the scenes 
of time. 

In point of fact, I suppose no man, whatever creed 
he may adopt, really believes, or can believe, that Christ 
is God in the sense which is sometimes claimed, — 
which was claimed by the old Monophy sites, — in the 
sense that the Jesus who was born in Bethlehem, and 
died on Calvary, was identical with the Infinite Father, 
and co-ordinate with absolute Beino\ It is hardlv 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 241 



possible to state the doctrine so as not to leave some 
loop-hole of escape from such a paradox. When the 
"Athanasian Creed," the highest Trinitarian standard, 
affirms the Father unbegotten and the Son begotten, it 
affirms an infinite difference between them. 

The question concerning the nature of Christ was 
the first opened, and will probably be the last closed in 
Christian dogmatics. Scarcely can two individuals be 
found who think precisely alike in this matter ; and yet 
all who rightly claim the name of Christian are agreed 
in this, that there is a divine and also a human element 
in the gospel and life of Christ. In what manner and 
proportion these elements unite, who can ascertain with 
perfect assurance for himself? — who will undertake to 
determine for others ? Councils and creeds may decide 
the question for ecclesiastical use ; but no council can 
determine and no creed can state it with such authority 
and such precision as to satisfy all the demands of the 
understanding and the heart. It is a question of phi- 
losophy, not of religion, and one whose theoretical solu- 
tion is not essential to spiritual growth. The heart that 
seeks will find a practical solution of it suited to its own 
need ; but all will not find the same. Some are born 
to one way of thinking, some to another. Some pre- 
fer to contemplate the divine in Christianity ; some, the 
human. Some require a human God for their Saviour, 
and some require a mortal example for their standard 
and guide in action and suffering. 

To me it seems, that the truest form of Christian faith 
unites both elements, the divine and the human ; and 
that none can know the full power of the gospel, and 

16 



242 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



experience all its height and depth and breadth, where 
either is wanting. 

I. We want the divine ; we want to see in Christi- 
anity the power of God and the wisdom of God made 
manifest for the moral welfare of man ; we want to see 
the Spirit of God entering into human nature to revive 
and redeem it. We want a teacher conscious of God's 
inpresence, claiming attention as a voice out of the heav- 
ens. We want a doctrine which shall announce itself 
with divine authority ; not a system of moral philoso- 
phy, but the word and kingdom of God. Without this 
stamp of divine legitimacy, without the witness and 
signature of the Eternal. Christianity would want that 
which alone gives it weight with the mass of mankind, 
and the place it now holds in human things. This it is 
which constitutes the specific difference between philoso- 
phy and religion : between the abstractions of the intel- 
lect addressed to the intellect, and truth incarnate, 
addressing heart and will. 

II. We need in Christianity the human also. We 
need the Son of Man ; we need the human example as 
model and motive. We need, for our Saviour, a nature 
to which no human experience is strange, — a nature 
that images but completes our own. If I saw in Jesus 
only God assuming human nature, enacting a human 
part for the inculcation of moral truth, I should see an 
illustration of the fair and good, but without flesh and 
bones ; a hollow apparition. I need no gospel to show 
me that God is without sin, that God can act wisely, 
that God can bless. What I want to know is, that man 
can resist ; that man can endure ; that man can be holy, 
and live a sinless life on the earth. This is the lesson 



CULMINATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 243 



of the life of Jesus, and this its chief value for us. The 
gospel is given as a revelation of God, but is given also 
as a revelation of man ; as a type of human nature, a 
pledge of human destiny ; as encouragement to human 
frailty, as incentive to action ; a call from the Son of 
Man to the sons of men, — a call to glory and immor- 
tality ; a pledge of divine communications according 
to the measure of faith ; a witness to all generations 
that the communications of Godhead, and the wonder- 
working power of the Spirit, are always equal to man's 
receptivity, and that the measure of man's receptivity 
is his obedience. 



II. 



LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY IN THE 
CHRIST OF REASON. 



as 



H. 



LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY IN THE 
CHRIST OF REASON. 



" Then shall also the Son himself be subject unto him that put all things 
under him, that God may be all in all." — St. Paul. 



It is the tendency of intellectual progress to displace 
personalities with ideas and laws. This is strikingly 
manifest in the change which the progress of science 
effects in man's conception of material nature. The 
savage sees in nature an aggregation of innumerable 
personalities. Mountain, lake, and forest are alive 
with conscious, invisible agents. Earth and sky are 
peopled with friendly or malignant beings ; every nat- 
ural process is the voluntary act of some good or evil 
spirit, designed for the benefit or injury of human 
kind. 

The early religions incorporated this view of nature 
in their systems of divinity and the objects of their wor« 
ship. They adored every natural agency, almost every 
natural object, as embodying or (in the case of Feti- 
chism) as being a divine person. Every tree and every 
river had its god ; the ocean swarmed with divinities ; 
the very winds were sacred personages, — all natural 

[247] 



248 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



agents conscious individuals, objects of religious wor- 
ship. Xot only the Greek and Roman polytheisms, 
with whose fanciful impersonations we are more famil- 
iar, but most of the religions of antiquity, like most 
Gentile religions of our own time, personified and 
deified natural objects and agencies. The devout 
Egyptian, beset before and behind with his copious 
mythology, could scarcely steer his daily course amid 
the sanctities which environed him, without profaning 
some god by unritual contact and secular use. The 
Persian derived from his two supreme Principles of 
Good and Evil an infinity of good and evil spirits. The 
Hebrew, even, believer as he was, by calling and pro- 
fession, in one only God, adopted from his neighbors, 
as objects of faith, if not of worship, a mythology of 
angels, good and bad, which formed no part of the law 
of Moses, but which a later superstition engrafted on 
the earlier creed. 

The progress of science dispels these illusions, re- 
places the mythological view of nature with the scien- 
tific, puts natural forces for voluntary agents, dethrones 
the old divinities, disenchants the landscape, unpeoples 
earth and flood, and gives us a code of rational laws 
instead of a hierarchy of srods. The first effect of this 
change from mythology to science is to rob nature of 
half her charms. It seems to take from the landscape 
its best interest, — the interest of personality. The 
world, as interpreted by science, seems cold and deso- 
late and dead, compared with the populous and teeming 
nature of old poetic tradition, — the world of sylphs 
and dryads and nereids and gnomes, — a world in 
which the whispers of the poplar and the pine could 



LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY IX CHRIST. 249 

seem intelligent and articulate voices ; the sparkle of 
the wave, half seen through the bushes, the smile 
of some inhabiting spirit, — a world where the deepest 
solitude promised the richest communion; not internal, 
spiritual, but visible, audible communion with angel or 
sprite. The most Christian of the poets of this century, 
smitten with the recollection of those old beliefs, now 
become pleasant fables merely, could exclaim in a mo- 
ment of impatient protest against the sordid utilities of 
modern life, — 

" Great God ! Tel rather be 
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn, — 
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

But a better experience succeeds. It is true, the 
charm of the old world, born of mystery and ignorance, 
vanishes with the dawn of science; but a new interest, 
born of light and knowledge, springs in its place. 
Pleasant was the old belief in personal powers pervad- 
ing nature with conscious effort, — spirits of earth and 
air : but a nobler satisfaction attends the revelations of 
that science which presents the authentic marvels of cre- 
ation, and enlarges indefinitely the sphere of our percep- 
tion ; which rolls back the curtains of time and space, 
and discloses a universe immeasurably wider, grander, 
richer than the wildest imaoinino's of the men of old. — 
revealing, in the boundless empyrean, worlds so remote 
that all the ages of human history would not suffice 
for the swift -footed light to accomplish the distance 
between them and us : which finds past eternities chron- 
icled in the earth's crust, — foregone creations pressed, 



250 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



like a botanist's herbal, between the leaves of the rocks ; 
which encounters microscopic nations in a handful of 
dust, and sees continents reclaimed by successive gener- 
ations of insect architects, converting sea into dry land; 
which discovers, in all the realms of organism and in 
all the processes of chemic and mechanic nature, such 
marks of pervading mind, such vestiges of all-present 
Deity, as abundantly compensate the absence of the 
fauns and dryads of Greek superstition, or the elfs and 
gnomes of the Gothic creed. The poet whom I have 
quoted is glad, in a happier mood, to acknowledge this 
holier Presence which replaces to the modem, instructed, 
thoughtful observer the trivial beings of the old my- 
thology, — 

K A presence far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting sons, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
Amd the blue sky, and in the mind of man, — 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

"What science has clone for nature, Christianity, when 
first promulgated, did for religion : it discharged the 
raind of its former reverences, while, at the same time, 
it instilled a far profounder reverence for new and sub- 
limer ideas in the soul. The preaching of the gospel 
scared the old sanctities from all their haunts, as the 
cockcrow scares the spirits of the night. It shook 
the gods, like withered leaves, from all the branches of 
mortal life ; but new-hallowed the tree by deriving its 
sap direct from the one Supreme, and grafting on 
its stock the divine humanity from which, as a branch 
abiding in the vine, every faithful soul imbibes its por- 



LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY IX CHRIST. 251 



tion of divine nature. It expelled from the field of 
faith and worship all lesser personalities, and claimed 
the whole ground for the one eternal Person above all 
and through all and in all. The birth of Christ emp- 
tied the pantheon, and disenchanted the landscape. 

" From haunted spring and dale, 
Edged with poplar pale, 
The parting genius is with sighing sent." 

And piety resented the desecration. Xothing in prim- 
itive Christianity more shocked the Roman world 
than its want of divinities. It was not enough that 
Christians believed in One above all : intelligent Gen- 
tiles did the same. ? 'TTe know, 55 says Plutarch, "that, 
among the great company of gods which are generally 
believed, there is but one who is eternal and immuta- 
ble : all the rest, having been born in time, shall end 
in death." But then the Gentiles did believe in those 
inferior divinities : the Christians did not, and were 
therefore accounted atheists by their fellow-citizens. 
In the persecution of the Christians instituted by the 
Emperor Diocletian, when the church at Nicomedia 
was destroyed by the imperial commissioners, the people 
ransacked the sacred precincts in vain for shrines and 
statues, representing Christian divinities, on which to 
wreak their spite. No statue, no idol, found they; 
no sacred thins: which thev could insult : nothing but a 
copy of the Scriptures, — the Church Bible, — which 
they brought out, and publicly burned in the market- 
place. The fact is symbolic : it illustrates the grand 
distinction between the Christian religion and most of 
the religions of antiquity. Xo idol but a book. Above 
all personalities, the Sacred TTord : the best thoughts of 



252 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



the best minds ; their holiest and deepest, purged of all 
personal infirmities and limitations ; the purest utter- 
ance of the Spirit. 

Christianity, we know, did not keep in this its first 
estate. The idols it expelled returned to confuse and 
corrupt the Church. Canonized saints succeeded to 
the seats of heroes and demigods ; a Christian pantheon 
replaced the gentile ; a new mythology filled its niches 
and shrines with a new code of sacred personalities, 
superior indeed to the old in its moral scope, but, like 
that, entangling devotion with secondary objects, and 
interposing inferior sanctities between the soul and the 
All-holy. 

One principal effect, as it was one principal aim, of 
the Protestant reform, has been to purify Christian wor- 
ship ; to recall devotion from the adoration of all lesser 
names, and fix it on the true and only God. And if 
some who profess the Christian faith have gone further 
in this reform than others ; if, not content with repudi- 
ating the worship of the Virgin and the saints, they 
also deny to the person of Christ the supreme homage 
which belongs to the Supreme God, they have been, 
whether right or wrong, impelled to this result by 
precisely the same feeling which actuated the early 
reformers in their renunciation of saint-worship and 
Mary-worship, — the desire to come into primary and 
direct relation and communion with the Father of 
spirits, and the consciousness that the fact of creation, 
as well as the calling in Christ, entitles and invites to 
such communion. 

Another cause conducing to the same result is the 
preference given by this class of minds to the ethical 



LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 253 



above the dogmatic in religion. What they value most 
in Christianity is its clear revelation of moral truth ; its 
sharp and emphatic enunciation of the law of love ; and 
the aid it furnishes to purity of heart, and righteousness 
of life. In this consists, as they believe, the trans- 
cendent merit of the gospel, — that it tends above all 
other religions to this result. Nothing is so near to 
God, or brings man so to near him, as this. Every 
other approach, except it in some way ministers to this, 
is delusion. Every attempt to draw near to him by 
ecstasy or passion is a vain imagination; at best, a 
temporary spasm. There is no true union with God 
but loving and loyal obedience. And when religion 
is divorced from practical goodness ; when this most 
Christian element is out of it ; when the doctrinal 
interest or the ecclesiastical interest, or even the devo- 
tional interest, supersedes the moral, — it loses its prac- 
tical significance ; — Christianity, its distinctive value 
as a practical mediator between the human and divine. 
This is what believers of the class I am considering 
find and prize in the gospel of Christ. To them it is 
an ethical rather than a sacramental or dogmatic code, 
— a dispensation of grace and truth, and not an eccle- 
siastical rule. 

It follows, that, in their conception, the person of 
Christ has not the same aspect and meaning which it 
has in most ecclesiastic and dogmatic systems. The 
denial of supreme worship implies the denial of deity 
to Jesus in the would-be orthodox and monophysite 
sense, and the limitation of that revered personality 
within the bounds of historic fact. Viewed historically, 
Christ to them is a sacred memory, the model man in 



254 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



whom was the fulness of the Godhead ; who illustrated, 
as no other has done, the divine humanity which he 
affirmed ; who alone could say from the fulness of his 
moral consciousness, " I and the Father are one ; " 
and who therefore remains to all ao;es a standing wit- 
ness of the height to which human nature has attained ; 
the Providential type of spiritual sonship, of the adoption 
of the human into the divine. Viewed in the present, 
Christ to them is a holy aim ; the ideal Head toward 
which the Church, or human society, is to grow, "till 
we all come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of 
the stature of the fulness of Christ," — the ideal Vine 
in which the body of believers is rooted and grafted, 
and by union with whose idea they are made fruitful 
of good : they abiding in his word and love, his w r ord 
and love abiding in them. This is what Christ is to 
minds of this class ; a method, a w r ay, the approach to 
God ; not a vicarious sanctity, an interposed secondary 
person, intercepting and superseding the Supreme. 

To me there has always seemed, in the views and 
language of Christians claiming to be orthodox on 
this subject, a baleful and hopeless confusion. Their 
Christology and their common sense — the dogmatic 
and historical conscience — conflict. They would have 
their Christ to be "very God," and worship him as 
such, and still retain the mediatorial idea, and make the 
Christ serve in that capacity also. But the two uses 
are incompatible. In the region of dogmatic we may 
speak of two natures in one person, and invent philo- 
sophic formulas for that conception ; we may say that 
Christ is " God-man," and this may be the truest word 
concerning him, the truest definition of the Christ 



LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 255 



ideally considered. But practical religion, and espe- 
cially private devotion, craves more precise conceptions. 
If God is one, and the human individual is one, they 
cannot both be the same one, though both may unite 
in one appearance (jcpoauirov, person) ; that is, the visible, 
human individual may personate or represent the invisi- 
ble God. But the appearance is but a transient, 
earthly phenomenon, though embodying an eternal 
idea ; and if we are logically honest, and in the spirit 
of that honesty analyze this conception of the God-man, 
we shall see that the phrase denotes an idea, and a per- 
sonal appearance in the scenes of time embodying that 
idea ; a divine demonstration, not the individual through 
whom and in whom that demonstration was made. 
The Christ of the Gospel is that demonstration, — God 
in man. The image which Jesus has stamped of him- 
self on the Church and the world stands for that. But 
when from the Christ of the Church we turn to the 
actual Jesus, as we figure him ; when we think of him 
as a presently existing individual, we shall see that this 
individual must be one of three things : 1. The Supreme 
God; 2. Neither God nor man, but an intermediate 
being; or, 3. Pure man. 

1. If Ave say that Christ is Supreme God, we not 
only deny a presently existing Jesus distinct from God, 
but we virtually deny that any such individual ever 
existed (unless we suppose him annihilated at death). 
We make the Christ of the Gospel history a mere appa- 
rition, that history an illusion, — a phantasmagoria with 
no human reality subtending it. They who hold this 
opinion have lost their Christ ; not in the sense con- 
templated by Paul as the consummation of the Christian 



256 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY, 



ages, when Christ is to deliver up the kingdom to the 
Father ; but in the sense that there is and was no Christ 
other than the Father. Instead of two they have only 
one ; it is either Christ that they hare lost, or else it is 
God. It follows further from this view, that all pray- 
ing to God in the name of Christ is glaring contradic- 
tion, or an impious mockery of devotion; addressing 
Christ, and using him as a third person at the same 
time. There should be no confusion in prayer. De- 
votion requires for the being addressed a simple, how- 
ever imperfect and inadequate, conception. Dogmati- 
cally, we may speak of two natures in one, or say that 
the Godhead is contained in two persons, or in three; 
but, practically, we cannot address one person as two, 
or as three, without confusion of mind ; and we cannot 
address two persons, or three, as co-equal, without 
polytheism. 

2. If we say, in accordance with the Arian view, that 
the Christ is neither God nor man, but a being distinct 
from both, we remove him so far from our sympathies, 
and all our associations and habits of thought ; we make 
him so unreal, so chimerical, so abnormal a being, that 
we know not how to adjust ourselves with one whom 
we can neither adore as God nor sympathize with as 
man, and so must needs lose the best effect of his idea. 

3. If, finally, we say that Jesus, as presently ex- 
isting, is pure man, a glorified human spirit, we have 
a precise idea in our minds, and a definite object of con- 
templation ; a being with whom the consciousness of 
Christians may find itself in true relations, but still a 
finite being, and therefore not one who can fully satisfy 
the craving soul, or take the supreme place in our devo- 



LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 257 



tions ; and though, theoretically, there would seem to 
be no reason why prayer should not be addressed to 
Christ, and though we readily conceive that a Christian 
soul may be moved so to pray, yet to one who ration- 
ally ponders the matter, it will probably occur, that 
the feeling which prompts one man to offer prayer to 
a glorified Jesus may prompt another to pray to a 
glorified St. Paul or St. Augustine ; that the principle 
which justifies the one will justify the other, will cover 
the broad hagiolatry of the Church of Rome. More- 
over, it might seem that Christ himself has forbidden 
prayer to himself, in those words of his : " In that day 
ye shall ask nothing of me." And when, above all, we 
recollect, and lay it to heart, that the one chief aim of 
the gospel is to reconcile and unite to God, — to bring 
the soul into conscious relation and immediate contact 
with the Father; then all dwelling in inferior sanctities, 
all pre-occupation of mind and heart with lesser names, 
will be seen to be a traversing of that intent, and con- 
trary to the doctrine of Christ. If "the Son can do 
nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father do ; " 
if the Son can give nothing but what he receives, — 
then why not go to the Father at once ? why stop short 
of the infinite fulness? Why kneel at the pool, when 
through the pool the everlasting prime Fountain invites 
every soul to full participation of the underived, super- 
nal grace ? 

The mystic words of St. Paul, prefixed to this chapter, 
seem to anticipate the view, here presented, of the per- 
sonality of Christ. The language is obscure, its im- 
port somewhat uncertain. Criticism is not authorized 

17 



258 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



to pronounce definitively concerning it. But I can sup- 
pose, that the rapt apostle, discoursing of the "resur- 
rection" and immortality, and rising, in his argument 
on this sublime theme, to the height of prophetic vision, 
foresaw the approaching deification of the Son of Man ; 
divined its reason and necessity in the counsels of God 
and the wants of the Church ; and so announced, that 
Christ H must reign till he hath put all things under his 
feet.'' But, casting his inspired glance along the line 
of the Christian ages, he foresaw that this deification 
would be temporary, because no created or generated 
being can hold for ever the place of the Supreme, by 
whose will alone he can hold it at all ; and so predicted 
"the end, when Christ shall deliver up the kingdom to 
God, even the Father," and when the Son himself 
should "be subject unto Him that put all things under 
him, that God may be all in all." 

Assuming this to be the true interpretation, the first 
part of this saving has been signally verified. Its 
verification has been the chief topic of the doctrinal 
history of the Church. Christ did not reign as God 
when Paul wrote ; he did so reign in the ages which 
followed. And we can see, in the retrospection of those 
ages, how needful it was, for the triumph and perfect 
dominion of the gospel, that Christ should be the God 
of the nations that renounced for his sake the gods of 
their inheritance, and deserted their country's altars. 
We can see that the abstract God of our theology — 
the God who is absolute being — would not suffice for 
the peoples just emerging from the darkness of polythe- 
ism, and used to succinct and concrete divinities. They 
needed a precise, historical God; one to lay hold of 



LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY IN CHRIST. 259 



with their conceptions, one whose portrait could be 
painted in mortal colors, whose actuality was vouched 
by mortal witnesses ; a God of whom you could tell 
anecdotes, and show the birthplace and earthly abode; 
a God whose being was not an inference, or fact of 
revelation, but a fact of history, a well-attested human 
experience. Such a God the Church supplied in the 
Son of Mary, as Christian tradition presented him ; 
the divine mystery, "manifest in the flesh, justified in 
the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, 
believed on earth, received up into glory;" the being 
who was cradled in prodigy, and moved in an element 
of perpetual marvel ; whose manger angels heralded, 
whose sepulchre angels unsealed ; whose birth into this 
world was heavenly condescension, whose going out of 
it was heavenly triumph. This august being the grateful 
adoration of the Church, and the will of the Father, 
lifted into Godhead, — the worthiest figure that had 
ever occupied that place. And there he reigned from 
age to age, and put all things under him. All the gods 
of the nations to whom his word came he put under his 
feet, — Olympian Jove, and his shining progeny, Phoe- 
bus Apollo, great Diana of the Ephesians, and her 
Tyrian counterpart, " Mooned Ashtaroth," K Peor and 
Baalim," and the stormy spirits of the Norse Wal- 
halla. The devils quailed before his sovereignty. Sa- 
tan as lightning fell from heaven, whole mythologies 
withered away, the forest and the sea and the lonely 
mountain-top gave up their divinities, Death and Hell 
were cast into the burning lake, the old heavens and 
the former earth passed away, and the new creation 
acknowledged with divine honors its author and Lord. 



260 



RATIONAL CHKISTIAXITY, 



So truly and exceedingly lias that saying of Paul hith- 
erto been fulfilled. 

As to what remains, — the predicted end when Christ 
shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father, and the 
Son himself be put under, — it is easy to speculate; 
and some may think to find the ^fulfilment of that 
prophecy in the blank denials and repudiations of a 
shallow iconoclasm. But fulfilment comes not by way 
of denial : it comes by complete development. It is 
easy to speculate and easy to deny ; it requires little 
wit to spurn and reject an old belief which we cannot 
rationalize : but only time and the ever - progressive 
consciousness of Christendom can unfold, and only 
the fully unfolded fact can rightly interpret the folded 
truth of the prophet's word. 

Meanwhile, this truth remains, and may serve as 
our guide in these inquiries, — that the function of 
the person is historical, and therefore transient. In the 
sphere of spiritual contemplation, no personality abides 
but the ever-becoming personality of God, conceived 
by faith, and born of faith, in the individual soul. Infi- 
nite and underived being alone can satisfy the freely 
inquiring, freely aspiring. Only that which bounds the 
uttermost thought, and tops the boldest imagination, 
can fulfil to reason and faith the idea of God. What- 
ever derived and secondary power by divine permission 
may hold that place is a temporary vicegerent, occupy- 
ing a borrowed throne, and exercising a delegated sway, 
which he must finally deliver up to God, K even the 
Father." — "For when," says the brave apostle, "he 
saith, r all things are put under,' it is manifest that He 
is excepted which did put all things under/' 



m. 



TIT. 



MIRACLES. 



" Mais il faut remarquer que ces mots, de 4 sur humain ' et de ' sur- 
naturel,' emprunt^s a notre th^ologie mesquine, n'avaient pas de sens dans 
la haute conscience religieuse de Jesus.' 1 — Renan, Vie de Jesus. 



The earliest records of our religion — the books of the 
New Testament — contain accounts of certain transac- 
tions to which, as exceeding the ordinary experience of 
human kind, we give the name of miracles ; that is, 
wonders. 

These accounts, in time past, were received without 
question. But the prevalence, in our day, of the 
scientific mind, and the progress of critical inquiry, 
have brought such narratives into disrepute, as conflict- 
ing with those laws of nature which science claims to 
have established. The events in question, it is urged, 
cannot be explained by known laws : they have no 
parallel in our experience, and therefore are not to be 
received as historical. 

The repugnance to miracles, so far as the Christian 
records are concerned, is due, in part, to the unwise 
use which modern theologians have made of them as 
proofs of divine authority, and therefore evidences of 

[263] 



264 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



Christian truth. The claim of the gospel to be a divine 
dispensation has been rested upon them. The uncer- 
tain evidence of human testimony, reported by uncertain 
tradition, has been preferred above the witness of the 
Spirit, which speaks for itself, and is always its own 
demonstration. This is all wrong, and is felt to be so 
by Christian thinkers at this day. Miracles are value- 
less as proofs of divine authority, because, with our 
views of such matters, it is easier to believe in the thing 
to be proved than it is to believe in the alleged proof. 
It is easier to believe that a teacher is divinely inspired, 
than it is to believe that he exhibits any prodigy which 
contradicts, or seems to contradict, the possibilities of 
nature. 

In the age which produced the writings of the New 
Testament, when the laws and limits of nature were 
less generally understood, when belief was less critical, 
and marvels of all kinds more readily received, this 
difficulty, of course, did not exist in the same degree. 
Yet, even then, a mind that was sceptically inclined, or 
predetermined against the revelations of the gospel, 
would not have been likely to be convinced by the 
demonstration of a power which many in that day were 
supposed to possess, and a class of works which many, 
beside Jesus, assumed to perform. In fact, so common 
in the ancient world was the claim of miracle, that a 
statute of Moses expressly provides against receiving 
that as a test of prophetic truth. 

Nor does it appear that Jesus aimed to force convic- 
tion in that way. Whatever may be the truth con- 
cerning the miracles ascribed to him in the New 
Testament, they are represented as works of love. To 



MIRACLES. 



265 



suppose them performed for any other purpose is to 
substitute an inferior motive in the place of that divine 
beneficence, which gives to these acts, if real, their 
highest value. No unprejudiced person can read the 
record, and say that Jesus ever sought to surprise men 
into belief ; that he ever stormed the senses in order to 
carrv the heart. Had such been the motive, the mira- 
cles would have been in accordance therewith : they 
would all have been of that portentous kind which he 
repudiated when urged to exhibit " a sign from heaven." 
Had it been his policy to work conviction by appeal to 
marvels, he would have multiplied marvels where in- 
credulity was greatest. He would have hurled prodigy 
upon prodigy at the head of unbelief, until it should 
capitulate, and cry, "Lord, I believe." But such is 
not the nature of man, and such is not the nature of 
faith. The senses do not command the soul. No evi- 
dence of the senses will convince a man of that which 
all within him contradicts. The senses, in such cases, 
are suborned by the will, and refuse to testify truly. 
Or, if the senses say true, the understanding, like a 
tricksy advocate, has always an argument at hand to 
invalidate their testimony, — can always put a contrary 
interpretation upon it, or find some method of evading 
the conclusion to which it points. Two persons of 
different persuasion, and different tendencies of mind, 
shall witness the same phenomenon without seeing the 
same thing ; they shall state it differently in their re- 
ports ; they shall draw entirely different conclusions 
from it. 

There is no such connection between supernatural 
power and spiritual truth, as would make a miracle a 



266 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



sufficient and infallible test of divine revelation. A 
man may work wonders before my eyes. I know not 
by what means he operates, nor whence he derives his 
wonder-working power. But, without other evidence, 
I shall not therefore consider him a divine person, or 
divinely commissioned prophet. I shall not receive his 
doctrine, if it contradicts the voice in my heart. 

Let me fetch an illustration from our own time. We 
have heard of certain phenomena — perhaps have wit- 
nessed them — known as " spiritual manifestations ; " 
such as moving of furniture by invisible agency, deto- 
nations syllabling words and names, involuntary writ- 
ing, and the like. These phenomena are affirmed by 
those who pursue them to be the work of invisible per- 
sonalities called " spirits." We have here a species of 
miracle as well attested as such things can be. It is 
not my purpose to discuss these phenomena. Suppose 
them real, not empty illusions, and suppose them to be 
the work of the agency to which they are ascribed : 
the question is, what evidence do they furnish of pro- 
phetic wisdom or spiritual truth ? None whatever, that 
I can discern. I can see no connection between the 
prodigies in question and the truths of religion, or any 
other truths. Invisibility is to me no pledge of superior 
wisdom. The word of a wise and good man, speaking 
from the fulness of a sound mind and an honest heart, 
communicating by natural organs, unaccompanied by 
any extraordinary manifestations, would weigh with me 
more than the utterances of a hundred mediums, pur- 
porting to speak by dictation from the shades. And, if 
a doctrine were propounded to me, through such a 
medium, which contradicted my own conviction, I 



MIRACLES. 



267 



should certainly have no hesitation in rejecting it, 
though I might not be able to disprove the dictation, 
and though I should admit the marvels appealed to in 
defence of that origin. I should say, I know not what 
latent powers there may be in the air or the human 
organism, by which such wonders are effected ; but the 
doctrine is all the more questionable which comes to me 
from such a source. I should say, that these invisibles 
— if spirits they are who dictate such stuff — were 
more in need of instruction themselves than able to 
impart it ; and that if they are really, as is sometimes 
claimed, the great departed who deliver themselves 
thus, then to die, for them, has not been gain : they 
have lost the wit which they had in the body, and 
verify the melancholy saying, that ?f a living dog is 
better than a dead lion." 

Had Jesus been disposed to act on the faith of men 
by means of marvels, he yet knew too well what was 
in man not to know that the senses do not lead, but 
follow, the convictions of the heart ; that faith is not the 
offspring of miracles, but miracles, of faith. Had he 
been disposed to enforce belief by signs and wonders, 
he would have multiplied those wonders where unbelief 
was greatest. So far from this, an evangelist tells us, 
with great frankness, that Jesus "did not many mighty 
works " in his own country, " because of their unbelief." 
Do you wonder at such incredulity? The wonder is 
rather that so many believed on him. To one who 
regarded only the circumstances of the man, what was 
there to inspire trust ? His fellow-citizens saw in him 
a townsman as lowly born, as poorly circumstanced, as 
themselves. The people of Judea saw in him a Gali- 



268 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



lean whose origin seemed a presumption against him. 
There wanted the prestige of the Pharisee, the learning 
of the scribe. There was a rumor of wonderful cures ; 
but rumor is so apt to exaggerate ! Did he cast out 
devils ? It was by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. Do 
we wonder that Jesus was so judged by his age ? Was 
there ever an age that would have judged otherwise? 
Was there ever an age that would have been more 
ready to receive such a prophet, to see the divine in 
him, than were his contemporaries? Regarding him 
from our point of view, it seems to us, that such purity, 
such devotion, such beneficence, would have won our 
belief, had we come within their sphere. It is easy to 
see these qualities in the past ; but to see them in the 
present, to see them in one who offends our cherished 
convictions or pre-conceptions, is quite another thing. 
If we had lived in those days, we should have seen 
through our prejudices as those people did. We should 
have seen what our prejudices permitted, and nothing 
else. Miracles would not have convinced us, if other- 
wise indisposed to believe. It is folly to imagine that 
we could be made to believe against our wills by any 
material sign. Our unbelief would put its own con- 
struction on that sign. We should find an explanation 
of it congenial with our views. We should see it 
through the medium of our prepossessions. We should 
see it, not as it was, but as we are. 

No one who rejects the divine origin of Christianity 
will ever be brought to believe in it on the ground of 
its miracles, for the obvious reason that they never can 
be proved to the satisfaction of unbelief. No amount 
of evidence is sufficient for that purpose. A miracle is 



\ 



MIRACLES. 2G9 

insusceptible of historic proof, because, as a matter of 
external evidence to be weighed in the balance of prob- 
abilities, the d priori presumption against such facts 
outweighs any testimony that can be adduced in its 
support. The Princess Ulrica of Sweden wished to 
test the reality of Swedenborg's intercourse with the 
spiritual world. She asked him to report to her 
the substance of a conversation which she had had with 
her brother, a short time previous to his decease, of the 
nature of which she was sure that no living person 
could have any knowledge. A little while after, the 
seer, to her amazement, — so the story goes, — fulfilled 
her request. But she would not accept the conclusion 
which seemed to follow from that test. Her answer 
was, "How M. v. Swedenborg has possessed himself 
of this knowledge, I cannot guess ; but I do not believe 
that he has conversed with my departed brother." 

The presumption against the supernatural is not only 
stronger, with those who disincline to believe, than 
human testimony ; it is even stronger than the evidence 
of our own senses, as is shown in many remarkable 
cases where individuals have been unable to see what 
others saw, or unable to believe that they had seen it. 
Shakespeare understood the human heart when he made 
Hamlet, after conversing with the ghost of his father, 
speak of w the undiscovered land from whose bourne no 
traveller returns." It is in vain to appeal to ocular 
demonstration, — to say that seeing is believing. Un- 
belief will see with the eyes of unbelief ; for we can see 
only as we are. 

Let us bring the case home to ourselves. Suppose 
a prophet sent to our time, and reported to work raira- 



270 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



cles among us. He is said to have raised the dead. 
Would the sceptically inclined give credit to such a 
report upon any conceivable testimony that might be 
adduced in its support? Nay, suppose them to have 
witnessed it with their own eves, — to have stood bv 
the graveside of some Lazarus when the inhumed came 
forth, would they even then believe that they had seen 
the dead arise ? Would they not find some explanation 
of that or any similar phenomenon, which should strip 
it of its miraculous character, and range it with the 
uniform experience of mankind? Only when we had 
been brought into contact with the prophet himself, 
and had read divinity in the light of his eye, and im- 
bibed its influence by coming within its sphere, and 
been all penetrated with reverence and love, — only 
then should we — I will not say believe in those mira- 
cles — but only then should we be in that moral 
condition in which belief in miracles is possible to dis- 
ciplined and intelligent minds. We should then have 
gone behind the miracle, and conversed with its source. 
We should have stood at the power-fountain of miracu- 
lous goodness to which all things are possible. Hap- 
pily, we are so constituted that we can believe in 
something hio-her than the senses and the understand- 
ino\ We can believe in something which does not 
admit of demonstration. What would become of us, 
embosomed in this material, with no nurture but hard 
facts, and no light to guide us but our bounded experi- 
ence ; — with no mystic border to our existence in the 
flesh, and no horizon of celestial ether to our day? 

The argument which Hume draws from the unde- 
monstrableness of miracles is conclusive only against 



MIRACLES. 



271 



the use of them as evidence, not against the facts them- 
selves. It does not follow, because a miracle is insus- 
ceptible of proof, that a miracle is impossible. The 
understanding tolerates nothing supernatural : and we 
do right to explain what can be explained, by known 
causes, — to suppose no miracle where other supposi- 
tion will serve ; as far and as fast as possible, to trans- 
late the supernatural into the natural. 

But, on the other hand, we are poor creatures if 
nothing is dreamed of in our philosophy but square 
and compass, and mechanical laws ; if our logic re- 
jects every thing that cannot be measured by feet and 
inches, and weighed in market - scales : if there is no 
corner in our mind or heart where faith in miracles 
can lodge. 

And now, a word concerning the objection to miracle, 
drawn from "the order of nature/' so called, — the 
alleged inviolableness of natural laws. The argument 
amounts to no more than an d priori presumption 
against any event which contradicts the common expe- 
rience. It is not conclusive, and cannot be accepted 
as proof, without absolute assurance that all the laws 
and possibilities of nature and spirit are known to us. 
But who will pretend to such assurance? Who will 
pretend, that his knowledge embraces all the possibili- 
ties of nature? Who will pretend, that all the possi- 
bilities of the human organism, much less of the human 
spirit, are known to him? A mathematician demon- 
strated by mechanical laws the impossibility of the leaps 
performed by athletes on the stage : they contradicted 
the order of nature. And* they were repeated night 



272 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



after night. One law overrules and subordinates 
another in the daily experience of life. I contradict 
the Ism of gravitation whenever I jump from the 
ground. Whenever I will to hold my breath, I con- 
tradict the known laws of the human organism. What 
we call the order of nature is simply a convenient 
formula; safe enough in its ordinary applications, but 
a mere illusion when urged as alone conclusive against 
extraordinary events. What we call the order of na- 
ture is but the statement, in objective terms, of the 
limitation of our human experience. To one who had 
never seen or heard of an eclipse of the sun, the first 
experience of that phenomenon would be a violation of 
the order of nature. It would be just as correct to 
affirm that the method of nature is miracle, as it is 
to affirm with some that " the method of nature is not 
miracle, but law," if by miracle we understand the 
unprecedented, or a new creation. The new is as 
much the result of law as the old ; the unprecedented, 
as much as our most familiar experience ; a miracle, as 
much as the constancy of things. The experience of a 
few thousand years affords no warrant for pronouncing 
dogmatically what is or is not a violation of the '* order 
of nature,*' — an order of which the catastrophes and 
cataclysms known to geology, and distanced by mil- 
lions of years, are as much a constituent part as the 
rising and setting of the daily sun. In Babbage's cal- 
culating machine,* a law of increase which had oper- 
ated, with unbroken uniformity, in a hundred million and 
one instances, is overruled in the hundred million and 



* See "Vestiges of Creation,"" American edition, page 156, 



MIRACLES. 



273 



second instance by another law coming in and changing 
the rate of increase from one to ten thousand at a sin- 
gle leap. That new term was as much a part of the 
constitution of the machine, as much in the order of its 
mechanism, as the uniform regularity of the hundred 
million and one instances which had preceded it. In 
the dateless mechanism of the universe, the rarest ex- 
ception is just as legitimate as the rule ; and in human 
life, for aught we know, there may be exceptional ex- 
periences, exceptional powers, exceptional souls, which 
are just as much a part of the divine order as the most 
familiar events. It ill becomes man, whose history 
bears no larger proportion to the age of the world than 
the life of the ephemera bears to recorded time, to 
speak too confidently of the order of nature. 

" But is not a real miracle simply a violation of the 
laws of nature? ask several. Whom I answer/' says 
Carlyie, "with this new question, What are the laws 
of nature? To me, perhaps the rising of one from the 
dead were no violation of these laws, but a confirma- 
tion, — were some far deeper law now first penetrated 
into, and by spiritual force, even as the rest have all 
been, brought to bear on us with its material force." 
"But is it not the deepest law of nature that she be 
constant? cries an illuminated class. Is not the ma- 
chine of the universe fixed to move bv unalterable 
rules? Probable enough, good friends. . . . And now 
of you, too, I make the old inquiry, what those same 
unalterable rules, forming the complete statute-book of 
nature, may possibly be. . . . Have any deepest scien- 
tific individuals dived down to the foundations of the 
universe, and gauged every thing there? Did the Mak- 

18 



274 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



er take them into his counsel, that they read his ground- 
plan of the incomprehensible All, and can say, This 
stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas ! 
not in anywise. These scientific individuals have been 
nowhere but where we also are, — have seen some hand- 
breadths deeper than we see into the deep that is in- 
finite, without bottom as without shore." — "The course 
of nature's phases on this little fraction of a planet is 
partially known to us ; but who knows what deeper 
courses these depend on, — what infinitely larger cycle 
(of causes) our little epicycle revolves on? To the 
minnow, every cranny and pebble and quality and acci- 
dent of its little creek may have become familiar ; but 
does the minnow understand the ocean-tides and pe- 
riodic currents, the trade-winds and monsoons, and 
moon's eclipses, by all which the condition of its little 
creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmi- 
raculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? 
Such a minnow is man, — his ocean the immeasurable 
All ; his monsoons and periodic currents the mysterious 
course of Providence through aeons of aeons." 

The radical mistake in the scientific objection to 
miracles consists in defining a miracle to be a violation 
of the laws of nature. Such a definition must needs 
provoke the opposition of all whose function it is to 
ascertain and promulgate natural laws. Suppose we 
define it, an effect from an unknown cause, or the 
operation of an unknown law, subordinating or holding 
in abeyance a known one. So defined, its incredibility 
is made to consist in its unwontedness, which may fur- 
nish a presumption against the alleged fact, but cannot 
be considered a valid refutation. The unknown law 



MIRACLES. 



275 



may be conceived as a spiritual fact beyond the reach 
of natural science, — as belonging to that region of 
forces and experiences, which, in current phraseology, 
is termed "supernatural." That phrase "supernatural," 
however, must not be construed as unnatural or con- 
tranatural, but only as designating a higher plane of 
the universal Will, which comprehends in one omni- 
present, omnipotent agency the seen and the unseen, 
the world of causes and the world of effects. The real 
final and efficient cause of every event is the will of 
God. All causes and laws which science knows, and 
all which science does not know, are but different 
phases of the one Supreme. 

I am far from maintaining that belief in miracles is a 
necessary article of Christian faith. I only protest 
against the crudeness of that dogmatism w T hich affirms 
d priori the impossibility of* all that cannot be ex- 
plained by known laws, or that does not agree with 
universal experience, and exalts its idol of the tribe, its 
misconceived w order of nature," above the incalculable 
power of the spirit. 

I distinguish, moreover, in the so-called miracles of 
the New Testament, between the essential fact and the 
manner in which it is presented in the record. I con- 
ceive that a nucleus of historic truth, in a credulous 
age, may gather to itself a mythic embodiment which is 
questionable. Intelligent criticism must separate, if 
possible, the one from the other. For criticism has its 
legitimate function in relation to these as to other parts 
of the Sacred Writings, and to all writings. But legiti- 
mate criticism has also its limitations, and must not 
assume to rule out in the mass whatever conflicts with 



276 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



the critic's prepossessions, and only because of those 
prepossessions. It must not reject, on the ground of 
imperfect evidence, what does not admit, in the nature 
of things, of any other. 

Not only is a miracle insusceptible of proof, but 
revelation itself is insusceptible of proof, — of any other 
proof than its own interior light. Revelation tran- 
scends, and must transcend, demonstration. This is its 
specific distinction, — without which it is not revela- 
tion, but philosophy, — that it speaks with self-evident 
authority. Christianity has been more injured than 
aided by the indiscreet attempts of its defenders to 
ground its authority on external proofs. The misstate- 
ments of unbelievers should be exposed, their false 
conclusions refuted; but, beyond this, all so-called 
"evidences of Christianity " are worthless and vain. 
That would be a very insufficient religion which could 
be proved by testimony exterior to itself. If it does 
not speak with authority above all others, it speaks in 
vain. 

Attempts to prove the truth of Christianity are like 
attempts to prove the existence of light. The light 
shines, and proves itself by shining. It is its own 
demonstration, and no demonstration can make it 
clearer. So this moral light - — the light of the gospel 
— which shines into everv soul that is willing to receive 
it, and which makes our soul's day, — what can we 
say of it that shall be so convincing as itself ? If 
we have any other argument more cogent than that, we 
have a higher revelation, and need not its light. 

There may be errors respecting the nature of the 
light, and false theories there may be concerning its 



MIRACLES. 



277 



source ; but what of that ? Astronomy may be mis- 
taken in some of its calculations : is the sun, on that ac- 
count, less glorious or less dear? I need no astronomy 
to tell me what a blessing it is. And suppose we have 
not, in these biographies, unmixed historical truth; 
that some errors and misstatements have crept into 
the records ; — is the character of Christ, on that ac- 
count, less noble, or his word less divine? The ques- 
tion is not whether Jesus said precisely this, or did 
precisely that, in each particular case ; but whether 
Christianity, on the whole, is divine, - — whether this 
light, which for so many ages has irradiated the world, 
and given us such guidance as we have had in spiritual 
tilings, is God's truth, — a ray of heaven conducting to 
endless day, or a meteor born of the night, and mis- 
leading the blind. And this is not a question of logic, 
but a question of experience, which every soul must 
answer for itself. Christianity is not a matter of rec- 
ords and parchments, but a light and a life : which, if 
a man has it not, no logic can reason into him; and 
which, if a man has it, no logic can reason out of him. 
Kay, if you could prove that this record which we have 
of the sayings and doings of Jesus is a fable and a 
myth, even then you would not have destroyed Chris- 
tianity. In that case, I should say, Whether fable or 
fact, the mind that could conceive and give to the 
world such a portrait as that of the Christ, is itself 
the Christ. The product of that mind would still be 
the wisdom and the powder of God. Suppose you could 
prove that no such person as ]\Iichael Angelo ever 
existed ; that the name is not historic, but mythic ; the 
tradition we have of him a fable ; — the Church of 



278 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



St. Peter's would still be the wonder of the world, and 
the mind that planned it a master mind. However 
we may speculate concerning its origin, the Christian 
Church, — that stupendous fabric of which St. Peter's 
is a feeble type, — that august temple in which so 
many ages have knelt and prayed, — stands, and will 
stand, in spite of criticism. Christianity is : it is a 
fixed fact, — a part of the round world. And when I 
consider what it is, and what it has been; how many 
millions of believing souls have found peace in its 
doctrine, and freedom in its spirit ; to how many it has 
been their guide in life, and their stay in death; and 
how it has changed the face of the world ; - — it seems 
to me a small thing, in view of all this power and 
glory, to quarrel about the record, and fight against 
miracles, with this miracle of all time staring us in 
the face. 

Some of the miracles recorded in the New Testa- 
ment I cannot receive in the sense of the narrative : 
but I believe in the possibility of miracles; i.e., of 
works transcending common experience. I believe in 
them because I believe that spiritual powers are su- 
perior to physical, and may hold them in subjection ; 
because I believe that the soul is stronger than material 
nature, and may command it when it truly commands 
itself; because I see in the person of Jesus a greater 
miracle than any of the works recorded of him. When 
I think of the greater, I can easily believe the less. I 
contemplate the portrait of Jesus as presented in the 
gospel; and it seems to me so great and real, that 
material nature, with its uses and forces, looks shadowy 
beside it ; so solid and commanding, that all things 



MIRACLES. 



279 



must needs be subject to it. And, after all, I find in 
miracles no difficulty greater than I encounter when I 
reject them. I know of no canon of criticism by which 
I can eliminate every thing miraculous from the record, 
and yet retain the rest. If I reject them, I must reject 
the whole ; and, rejecting the whole, I do such violence 
to historical evidence as would undermine all history, 
and annihilate the past. 

At the same time, I would not be bound to a rigor- 
ous construction of the letter of the narrative in every 
case in which a miraculous event is represented in the 
text. I will not suffer my judgment to be brought into 
bondage to a letter. We have not, in these writings, 
contemporary documents ; but later productions, into 
which it is fair to suppose that some errors may have 
found their way. Whatever is written is open to criti- 
cism ; for the soul is greater than any scripture, and 
nothing can be more foreign from the spirit of Chris- 
tianity than a slavish interpretation of its records. 

The intelligent reader who brings to the New Testa- 
te cD 

ment a candid temper and an ordinary share of under- 
standing' will make such allowance as may be needful 
to reconcile the credit of the record with the credibility 
of the facts recorded. He will separate what is essen- 
tial in the record from what is incidental ; the central 
fact from the form in which it appears. He will not 
always see a miracle where the narrative has that look ; 
and, where he acknowledges a miracle, he will not 
always accept the common interpretation. In a word, 
he will give due honor to this memorial of a heavenly 
life, without doing unnecessary violence to reason and 
common sense. 



280 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



But be it remembered, that common sense and com- 
mon experience are nut the sufficient and only measure 
of spiritual truth ; and that, unless by the power of 
faith and the power of the spirit we can raise ourselves 
to a plane of vision above the level of ordinary life, the 
divinest word that ever yet found utterance in human 
speech, or embodied itself in human life, will speak to 
us in vain. 



IV. 

THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 



j 



IV. 



THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 



The New Testament speaks of ■* the Spirit " very much 
as the Old Testament speaks of Jehovah, or "the 
Lord." Where the Old Testament says, "The Lord 
spoke," or "The word of the Lord came," to this or that 
prophet, the New Testament substitutes Spirit. "Jesus 
was led by the Spirit into the wilderness." — " The Spirit 
said to Philip." — "The Spirit said to Peter," &c. &c. 
The same thing is meant in both cases, but the different 
phraseology marks a difference between the two dispen- 
sations. The same fact, the same power, is differently 
conceived. In one case, it is formal, concrete, — an 
individual. In the other, it is liberal and diffusive, — 
an influence. When the Jew thought of his Jehovah, 
it was somewhat as the Gentile thought of his Jove. 
He thought of him as a powerful individual, as a wise 
and strong man. When the evangelists thought of the 
Spirit, they thought of it as a breath, a vision, a whis- 
per in the heart ; a subtile influence informing the mind, 
inspiring the will, directing the life. 

The personification of the Spirit in the New Testa- 
ment is merely rhetorical ; but the Church, not satisfied 

[283] 



284 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY . 



with a figure of speech, converted the rhetoric into 
dogma. They constituted the Spirit a distinct person 
in the Godhead. No harm in this, if by "person" is 
meant nothing more than a mode of manifestation. 
But with many the idea of person hardens into that of 
independent individuality. The Spirit is conceived as 
a being, distinct from the Father, instead of a character 
of, or in, God the Father. This was not the intent of 
the doctrine, as defined by the councils of the Church. 
It conflicts with the accompanying doctrine of the 
" procession," as it is called, "of the Holy Ghost." 
The Spirit is said to " proceed " from God. And this 
procession was not once for all, but still continues. It 
is not a past transaction, a fact accomplished, but a 
present and constant process. The language is not 
"proceeded," but "proceeds." The question arose in 
the ages which developed this doctrine, whether the spirit 
proceeds directly and solely from God, or from God 
through Christ. The Greek Church taught, and still 
teaches, that the Spirit is wholly and only from the 
Father. The Latin or Roman-Catholic Church main- 
tained, and still maintains, that the Spirit proceeds from 
the Father and the Son. And the Latin Church is 
right : the interior meaning of that doctrine is, that 
the spiritual creation, like the material, is based on 
intelligence. There can be no holiness without in- 
sight. 

The Holy Spirit is that particular agency of God, 
direct or indirect, which concerns itself with the moral 
and religious education of mankind. It is God acting 
in this particular way as distinguished from God in 
nature. 



THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 



285 



Self-manifestation — the revelation of himself in ra- 
tional minds — must be supposed to be the end of all 
God's doing. The visible universe is one revelation, — 
intelligible only when viewed as such. "Day unto day 
uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowl- 
edge." Nature reflects to intelligent minds the divine 
Wisdom and Love. But Nature could never convey 
the most distant idea of moral good. The truth which 
we attempt to express, when we say that God is just, 
that God is holy ; the fact of a moral law, duty, con- 
science, accountableness, — these have no prototype or 
symbol in Nature. This is something of which Nature 
is unconscious. The animal world exhibits something 
of instinctive love, something of blind attachment, but 
nothing like justice, holiness. This is "the way which 
no fowl knoweth," which " the vulture's eye hath not 
seen," and which "the lion's whelps have not trodden." 
" The abyss saith, It is not in me ; and the sea saith, It 
is not with me." We should know God only as mighty, 
wise, and beneficent, never as holy and just, were 
there not another creation and revelation co-parallel 
with the material, — the moral creation, the revelation 
of the Spirit, in which God is revealed as Moral Law, 
and as Moral and Spiritual Good. 

The element and medium of this moral creation is 
the moral nature which always accompanies conscious 
intelligence, here and wherever conscious intelligence 
is found. Its materials are rational souls. Of these 
"living stones" the divine Architect, the Holy Spirit, 
compiles the spiritual fabric which all good men are 
helping to build, and whose completion will be the con- 
summation and crown of time. The Christian Church, 



286 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



in the vision of the apostles, was identified with that 
fabric, " Christ himself being the chief corner-stone ; in 
whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth 
unto an holy temple in the Lord." The Christian 
Church, in their theory, is not only the product, but the 
earthly representative and embodiment, of the Holy 
Spirit. At once both agent and object, creator and 
creature, it sends forth the influences which convert the 
world, and grows and reproduces itself by the influences 
it sends forth. 

If, now, from the theology of the Holy Spirit, we 
turn to its practical human side, we find in its action 
on human individuals a twofold influence. The Spirit 
acts on the reason and on the will. It inspires the 
knowledge of moral and spiritual truths, and it quickens 
the moral and spiritual life. We are influenced by it 
in our perceptions and in our practice. 

First, our perceptions, — the knowledge of moral 
and spiritual truth. All knowledge partakes more or 
less of inspiration. Our mental faculties are not the 
sources of truth. In and of themselves, they see noth- 
ing and know nothing. They are but organs, — sec- 
ondary agents. As the soundest eye conveys no image 
to the mind, until the li^ht from without has touched 
its nerve ; so the keenest intellect can never compre- 
hend the simplest truth, until moved to action by some 
impulse from abroad. Not that any knowledge, strictly 
speaking, is imparted. We acquire nothing by passive 
reception alone. All truth is the product of our own 
minds. But the mind can produce only as it is quick- 
ened from abroad. If this is true in respect to secular 
knowledge, how much more in respect to spiritual ! 



THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 



287 



If the truths which relate to the kingdoms of nature 
come by inspiration, how much more the truths which 
relate to the kingdom of heaven ! Why was it that all 
the wisdom of antiquity failed to penetrate those mys- 
teries which are now familiar to the dullest minds ? 
Why is it that many an uneducated Christian possesses 
on these subjects a depth of insight which puts to shame 
the wisdom of the world? Why, but that truths of 
this order are apprehended by some other faculty than 
the sensuous understanding. The Holy Spirit is the 
teacher here. And the fact illustrates the equalizing 
power of the Spirit, which not only overrules the fac- 
titious distinctions of social rank, but sets at nought 
those intellectual disparities which separate more widely 
between man and man. More than any scheme of 
human polity, it levels society by raising the lowest 
to an equality with the highest in that which in all is 
highest and best. It preaches its gospel to the poor 5 
and so maintains the equal rights of the mind, without 
which all other equality is futile and vain. 

What, then, it may be asked, is the agency of the 
Spirit in the communication of truth ? It is the agency 
of the sun in the natural world. The Spirit is to the 
mind what light is to the eye. Its office is not to 
impart truth, but to show it. To those who seek the 
truth in sincerity, the aid of the Spirit will not be want- 
ing. Let the eye be open, the heart free, and the 
understanding will be full of light. Doubt and unbelief 
will vanish away : the Spirit will guide into all truth. 

2. The Spirit is not only light to the understanding : 
it is also motive and guide to the will. Its agency 
affects not only the knowledge but the practice of the 



288 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



truth. By it we are filled with holy aspirations, and 
moved to good deeds. All goodness is from God, just 
as all power is remotely or directly referrible to him. 
This divine influence is not incompatible with human 
freedom. Every act of goodness is still an act of the 
will. Omnipotence itself will not enforce obedience. 
Xevertheless, it is God who worketh in us, both to will 
and to do. From him we derive the capacity and the 
impulse. But capacity is not necessity, and impulse is 
not coercion. We are moved, and yet move freely ; we 
accept the divine influence, yoke it with our destiny, 
and choose that the Spirit of God shall reign in our 
wills. Liberty is not absolute disengagement from all 
rule. It does not consist in lawless roving, but in free 
consent with legitimate sway, in free co-operation with 
the Supreme Will. Some rule we must obey ; but we 
may or may not elect our ruler. Two opposite currents 
of influence traverse the world. The one leads God- 
ward : the other, deathward. To move with the former 
is moral freedom ; to be carried with the other is con- 
tradiction and bondage. To say that God is the author 
of our goodness, no more detracts from the power of 
the human will, than to say that God is the author 
of truth detracts from man's intellectual powers. He 
acts upon us, not as compulsory force, but as quicken- 
ing influence. 

The operation of the Spirit is not always a direct 
action on the individual mind. More frequently it acts 
through the instrumentality of other, subordinate agents, 
— through the lips and lives of men, by teachers and 
books, by instruction and example, by institutions 
and ordinances, by every influence which moves the 



THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 



289 



soul to well-doing. When we read a good book, and 
are profited by it ; when we listen to discourse that acts 
favorably on our moral nature, that awakens good 
impulses in the breast, — we are visited and moved by 
the Holy Ghost. The Church, and every institution 
established for moral and religious ends, so long as it 
fulfils its original design, is a medium of this influence. 
It is the Holy Spirit made concrete. 

But, though this indirect operation is the more usual 
mode in which the divine influence is communicated, 
it acts also without the intervention of any visible 
agent : it acts as direct inspiration. There are motions 
of the Spirit in us which are not to be ascribed to any 
external influence : they are the Spirit of God acting 
on the instinct of goodness in the soul. There is this 
instinct in every soul. It is not the most patent, but 
the deepest, of all our instincts. Often neutralized by 
other propensities, it needs the quickening of the Spirit 
to give it life. Then it manifests itself in those moral 
aspirations by which the most thoughtless are some- 
times roused to conscientious and beneficent action. 
If ever, at some moment of solitary musing, we have 
felt within ourselves a stronger conviction of moral 
and spiritual truth, a stronger determination to good ] 
if ever we have seized with truer insight the meaning 
and purpose of our being, and have formed the resolu- 
tion to live for duty and for God, — it was the Spirit 
breathing on the latent spark of spiritual life in the 
breast, which gave us that vision, and caused those 
fires to glow. And, if we analyze our experience at 
such seasons, we shall see how man's free agency may 
consist with divine impulsion. We shall see, that while 

19 



290 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY . 



the determination of the mind to moral ends is a free 
determination, calling into action the whole force of 
our own will, it is still a divine impulse that moves us, 
and a God that works in us to will as well as to do. 

The agency of the Spirit, as now defined, is impar- 
tial, in itself considered ; but its efficacy in each indi- 
vidual is limited by personal conditions. It is limited 
by the receptivity which we bring to it. And the 
receptivity which we bring to it will depend in a great 
degree on previous training. I do not deny original 
differences of moral endowment. Some men seem 
born to goodness as a natural heritage : it is their pat- 
rimony. Their way apparently is smooth and free. 
No obstacle seems to intervene between the purposes 
they form and the ends they contemplate. The intent 
and the act hang together by natural dependence, like 
the links of a chain. We admire the facility with 
which they appear to glide onward to perfection, while 
we are constantly thwarted, and pulled back by inward 
contradiction or external force. Something of this 
difference may be due to natural inequality of moral 
constitution ; but more is due to self-discipline. If the 
Spirit of God has greater influence with some than 
with others, the reason is generally, that, by early obe- 
dience and long discipline, they have attained to higher 
degrees of spiritual life. Their previous habits have 
disposed the mind to be easily affected by such influ- 
ences ; the will has not been perverted and depraved ; 
the first impulses of the Spirit in them were not re- 
sisted, but received into willing minds, and suffered to 
acquire a permanent control of the thoughts and desires. 
In nothing is the truth of the saying, that K to him who 



THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 



291 



hath shall be given," more evident than it is in relation 
to the moral life. Therefore said an apostle, f? Grieve 
not the Holy Spirit of God." By a figure derived from 
human affections, the divine agency is represented, as 
a friend who wills our good, but may be vexed and 
alienated by our opposition or our indifference. Not 
that we can actually change the purpose of God, or 
avert his grace. Nothing that we can do can alienate 
his love, or render the Father of spirits less willing to 
aid and to bless. He is true to us, however we may 
turn from him. Nevertheless, we may destroy the 
efficacy of his gifts in us ; and, by alienating our own 
minds, may virtually alienate his love. The effect for 
us is the same, whether he is turned from us or we from 
him. 

There is a very remarkable coincidence between this 
apostolic precept and the doctrine of some of the 
ancient Gentile philosophers. Gentile philosophy 
taught, that a good spirit waits upon all who choose to 
accept its guidance. The great Athenian personified 
in this way the nobler instincts of his mind. He spoke 
of a daemon (or, as we should say, a good genius) 
who informed and impelled him. And Seneca, the 
contemporary of Paul, says more explicitly, as if he had 
received the thought directly from him, " There dwells 
in us a holy spirit who watches all our good and all 
our evil deeds, and who treats us according to the 
treatment he receives." 

Subjectively, then, the Holy Spirit is to be considered 
a divine instinct in man ; a special faculty, differing from 
reason and understanding, and the other faculties of 
the mind, in this, that it always speaks with authority ; 



292 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



it addresses us, not as argument, but as command. 
So it appears in numerous instances in the history of 
the apostles, who are represented as urged and impelled 
by this divine instinct to do, or refrain from doing, 
sometimes contrary to their own judgment or their own 
will. Paul and Timothy, it is said, " assayed to go into 
Bithynia; but the Spirit would not suffer them." It 
was reserved for Protestantism, in harmony with its 
true, original tendency, to follow out these hints, and 
unfold this subjective side, as the elder Church had 
developed the positive theological view of the Holy 
Ghost. Honor to George Pox and the founders of the 
sect of Friends, who first did justice to the Christian 
idea of divine inspiration ; who re-affirmed the spiritual 
instinct, and vindicated the inward light ! What to the 
elder Church was a barren dogma, a scholastic abstrac- 
tion, an hypothesis, the third person in Trinity, — -to 
them was a spiritual fact. "When the Lord God and 
his Son Jesus Christ," says Fox, "sent me forth into the 
world to preach his everlasting gospel and kingdom, I 
was commanded to turn men to that inward light, 
spirit, and grace, by which all might know the way 
to God ; even that divine Spirit which would lead into 
all truth, and would never deceive." His theory, and 
that of his followers, was and is, that man, if he will, 
may have the immediate guidance of the Spirit of 
God ; that inspiration is not a past fact, but a present 
reality. 

M Grieve not the Spirit ! " Be true to your highest 
instincts ! Often, in temporal matters, we are warned 
by a secret voice, which comes to us like a mandate 
from above, to do or forbear. It is always wise to 



THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 



293 



accept such warnings. We cannot hoj.e to prosper, if 
we sacrifice our own instinct to formal reasons and the 
judgment of others. People come to you, when you 
are hesitating between two courses of conduct, and say, 
Do thus and so. It is all very well, so long as no 
instinct of your own prompts otherwise ; but if some- 
thing w T ithin you says, Do no such thing, then be sure 
you do no such thing. If this is true doctrine in mat- 
ters of temporal import, how much more in things 
pertaining to our spiritual w^ell-being' ! Resist not this 
sacred force ! Beware of alienating the divine influ- 
ence ! Whenever you feel yourself prompted to any 
good work, to any act of kindness or self-denial, to 
any course of discipline or holy living, accept the 
impulse, hasten to obey while the fire burns. It is 
God that speaks in these secret promptings. Harden 
not your heart when you hear that voice. The Spirit 
will leave you if you refuse obedience ; every warning 
disregarded is a door closed against future progress. 
If you do not now the good which you can, the time 
will come when you cannot do the good which you 
would. 

If we would receive the divine influence in its fullest 
measure and its greatest force, we must earnestly de- 
sire it. God will help no one in that in which he him- 
self is indifferent ; he will not give his Spirit except to 
those that ask it. Other gifts do not wait our entreaty ; 
the common bounties of Providence are not withheld 
from those who neglect to ask for them ; but prayer is 
an indispensable condition of spiritual gifts. By prayer 
I mean not a form of words, but an earnest desire and 
a fervent affection. No needed gift is denied to the 



294 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



prayer of faith. Every thing may be had by him who 
earnestly desires what he should. If we fail to receive 
the grace we implore, it is because we ask with a waver- 
ing mind, and a lazy desire, and a sluggish faith. It 
is because we ask as if we wished or expected to be 
denied ; as a man asks a dentist to draw his tooth, 
or a surgeon to cut off a limb, or to execute any other 
painful operation which he supposes to be necessary, 
but would fain avoid if he could. "If we loved truly 
what we ask for daily," says Bishop Taylor, "we should 
ask with hearty desires and a fervent spirit. The river 
that runs slow and creeps by its banks, and begs leave 
of every turf to let it pass, is drawn into little hollows, 
and dies with diversion. So, if a man's prayer move 
upon the feet of an abated appetite, it wanders into the 
society of every trifling accident, and stays at the cor- 
ners of the fancy, and cannot arrive at heaven. But, 
when it is carried upon the wings of strong desire and 
a hungry appetite, it passes on through all the inter- 
mediate region of the clouds, and stays, not until it 
dwells at the foot of the throne, and draws down show- 
ers of refreshment." 

Pray for the Spirit ; for who in this world can do 
without it, — without its impulse, without its leaven, 
without its restraining and sustaining power? It has 
been affirmed that civilization and the progress of 
society are wholly and purely an intellectual product. 
To assert this is to forget the gift of God, and what it 
is that keeps the human heart from dying out, and all 
the powers from perishing through utter corruption. 
It is not our laws and our courts, not well-balanced 
constitutions and social devices, not science and steam 



THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 295 



and electro-magnetism, — not these alone that have 
brought us thus far, and made this world what it is ; 
but beneath all these, and above them all, a divine 
impulse, never wanting to the race of men ; a divine 
Spirit for ever haunting them with those two radical 
and universal ideas, — truth and duty, without whose 
penetrating and creative power not one stone would 
ever have been laid upon another of all our cities, no 
tree ever felled, no human implement fashioned for its 
work. And, if God should now withdraw his Spirit, 
this proud civilization, with its gorgeous palaces and 
solemn temples ; this shining and sounding culture, 
with its traffic and its arts, its stately conventions, and 
fair humanities, — would tumble and dissolve ; the wild 
beasts that are caged in these human frames, now awed 
and tamed by the presence of that Spirit, would creep 
forth, and rend, and devour ; and the civilized earth 
revert to chaos and night. 

The individual no more than society can dispense 
with the Holy Ghost. The rich requires it as well as 
the poor. He needs its promptings, and he needs its 
peace ; he needs its strength, and he needs its consola- 
tion. He needs it in smooth prosperity, and he needs 
it in the struggles and straits of life. He is subject to 
assaults from within and from without ; he is tempted 
to transgress the law in his mind, to obey the law in 
his members, to forsake himself, to swerve from the 
right. No earthly power can secure him against 
temptation, or deliver him when tempted. The Holy 
Spirit alone can bring him safely through the wars, 
and save his feet from falling and his soul from death. 
He is subject to calamity and sharp distress, to grief 



296 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY . 



and bereavement, the loss of his beloved, the wreck of 
his hopes. No earthly power can avert these woes, 
or soothe their sting. The Holy Spirit is the only 
comforter that can reach him in those deeps, and make 
the night seem light about him. This same Spirit is 
nearer to us all, and more to us, than any soul can 
fully know in this world, or is willing to believe. 
What is it, in fact, but the hidden life, the self of our 
self, which now and then bursts into consciousness, and 
amazes us with a foreign presence in our private 
thought? Those lucid intervals in our experience, 
those clear spaces in our life, when the roar and rush 
of the world's torrent ceases, and the cloud-rack lifts, 
and a bit of the blue sky struggles through, with revela- 
tion of immortal deeps ; — these are momentary realiza- 
tions of the presence of the Holy Spirit, from which at 
no time we are otherwise sundered than by the wan- 
derings of our own thought and will. 

But suppose this earthly world could be traversed, 
and this mortal life lived, without the gift of the Holy 
Ghost, how will it be when the gulf yawns toward 
which we are momently drifting? No earthly power 
can bridge that gulf, or ferry us over it. There is no 
spring in this breast of ours by which it can throw off 
the clod that is laid upon it, and erect itself out of dusty 
death. There is no power in this soul by which to 
extricate itself out of the wreck of this mortal. Let 
philosophers say what they will, there is no natural 
immortality. If ever we rise again to conscious life, 
it will be by no native power, but by the operation of 
the Spirit of God on souls already possessed by it, and 
in some degree conformed to its likeness. 



THE REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT. 



297 



The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is peculiarly Chris- 
tian. It is not a deduction of the human understand- 
ing, but a revelation from "the Father of lights." 
And, without this revelation, the name of God is only 
a name, a vague abstraction, having no relation to the 
heart or life. It is only through his Spirit that God 
becomes to us a person and reality. You may gather 
— who does not ? — from the visible creation the notion 
of almighty power and beneficent design. From the 
course of human affairs you may get — who does not? — 
the impression of a superintending Providence and an 
all-present Love. From the experiences of your moral 
nature you infer — who does not? — a moral govern- 
ment and a righteous law. But all this does not con- 
stitute the God of the Christian revelation, the Father 
of spirits and of mercies. That idea could never be 
wrought out of those materials. The idea of God is a 
revelation of his Spirit ; and unless the Spirit of God 
dwell in us, superstition may have an idol, conscience 
a law, philosophy a name ; but the heart has no God. 



I 



THE SPIRIT IN THE LETTER. 



V. 



THE SPIEIT IN THE LETTEK. 



All spirit, in proportion to the force there is in it, 
seeks to embody itself, and tends in time to become 
a letter. All spiritual movements, that are strong 
enough and true enough to last, end there. All reve- 
lations and reforms, after passing through the fluid 
stage, arrive at a solid one : after living and working 
as disembodied spirit for a while, they crystallize into 
stated, formal agencies, and settle down into scriptures 
and churches. Judaism was a spirit once, and became 
a letter ; Christianity was a spirit, and became a letter ; 
Protestantism was a spirit, and became a letter. Such 
was their providential destiny. Every letter, ordinance, 
organization, that now exists, was once a disembodied 
spirit ; and every thought, sentiment, movement, which 
now agitates society, if genuine and destined to endure, 
will one day become a letter. 

It will not do to quarrel with the letter : the spirit 
requires it. Spirit will not stay without a letter to 
hold it, as every one knows from his own experience. 
What avails your vision, your aspiration, your ideal? 
what avail your kind purposes and generous emotions, 

[301] 



302 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



if they do not embody themselves ? You have a vision 
of excellence ; it fills your whole soul ; your spirit is 
aglow with it ; it is your spirit for the time ; and could 
your spiritual interior at that moment be laid open and 
portrayed, as a photograph fixes the fleeting expression 
of the countenance, the portrait would be that of a hero 
or a saint. What boots it, if you do not embody that 
spirit in some word or work? It expires with the 
pulses of the breast ; it evaporates with a breath, and 
no man is benefited by it : it was and is not, and no 
memorial of it remains to kindle aspiration in another, 
or to rekindle it in yourself. But express that spirit, 
record it in some way, embody it somewhere, and you 
add some tiling to the spirit's life and the world's riches. 
As yet, it is a mere breath that steals over the soul, 
a possibility only ; you are none the better for it, nor 
any one else, if it end so. And yet the spirit is good 
and holy and divine as that which fired St. Francis 
when he poured out his soul in measureless love, or 
that which flooded the heart of Jesus when he prayed 
for his enemies on the cross. But, divine as it is in 
possibility, it is nothing in reality, until it is embodied ; 
and it may be worse than nothing, as exhausting sensi- 
bility in leaves without fruit, like the infructuous fig- 
tree, whose leafy and lying luxuriance availed nothing, 
but drew to itself a curse. As yet, it is a mere breath : 
shall it end so ? — a passing wind whence coming you 
heed not, nor whither going? or shall it become actual, 
and a fact of life? Express it, actualize it in some 
way, and straightway it becomes life, a thing, a fact ; 
insignificant in appearance, obscure in place, evanescent 
in time ; but still, life, and a fountain of life to others, 



THE SPIRIT IN THE LETTER. 



303 



an influence in the world, and so an actual, constituent 
part of the world, inseparable, indestructible. The 
difference between it and spirit unexpressed is simply 
infinite, — the difference between something and nothing. 
I fancy that, when the soul reckons with us in our day 
of judgment, we shall burn less with the memory of 
bad acts or words, than of good designs unembodied, 
and worthy thoughts unexpressed. 

All spirit, so far as it is good and holy at all, is a 
unity. The spirit which prays in any of us to-day, if 
the genuine fire of devotion is in us, is the same which 
discoursed in the Sermon on the Mount, and opened the 
eyes of the blind ; which blew into the soul of Peter, 
and drove Paul like a rolling thing around the world, 
and built up universal Christendom, with its temples 
and its scriptures, its sanctities and its arts. The 
difference between the spirit that did all this, and the 
holy thought or generous sentiment that stirs my heart 
to-day, and remains unexpressed, is not in quality, but 
in outwardness, — the difference between the spirit 
with a letter, and the spirit loithout it. Theoretically, 
the spirit that originated these things might not have 
originated them (although providentially it must), 
and yet have been as holy and divine a spirit still. It 
was no more holy and divine than the spirit that has 
wrought in many an anchorite and recluse, and in 
many a Quaker Friend, which might have produced 
the like, but did not embody itself, — spent itself, 
rather, in private devotion and secret contemplation. 

We are indebted to the letter as much as to the 
spirit, — to the spirit only through the letter. And 
when we consider how a piece of parchment in a regis- 



304 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



trar's office, which is not even looked at once in a life 
time, may fix the occupation of large portions of thf 
earth's surface for thousands of years ; and how a 
printed paper which they call a Constitution may de- 
termine the political condition of a nation, — the meas- 
ure of external freedom enjoyed, or bondage endured, 
of millions of people ; and how some leaves inscribed 
with tables of figures will enable a ship's company to 
find their way across the pathless sea, and to circum- 
navigate the world, — when, I say, we consider these 
things, and note the power of the letter, and the value 
of its function in the secular economy of life, we may 
come to think respectfully of its agency, as a power in 
religion. 

It must be granted to those who argue the cause of 
the spirit as against the letter, that no existing letter 
can endure for ever, or continue for ever to hold the 
place which it once held in % the spiritual economy. 
Every form in which the spirit clothes itself, every body 
it puts on, is transient ; every existing organization is 
destructible, and to be destroyed. The spirit endures, 
the form perishes. Yet even here we must distin- 
guish between form and type; that is, between the 
material form and the spiritual, — between soul and 
body. Every form of being* which is not exceptional 
or transitional and accidental, expresses a type which 
will re-appear when the form that now embodies it is 
dissolved. In other words, the form will reproduce 
itself continually. The human body is fragile and cor- 
ruptible : all the bodies in which humanity is now 
invested will soon be dust ; but the human form will 
endure while heaven and earth remain ; and when the 



THE SPIRIT IX THE LETTER. 



305 



heavens and the earth that now are have passed away. 
The human form is a letter that can never become 
obsolete. And so there may be types of the spirit in 
the present institutions and ordinances of religion, 
which will survive their dissolution, and reproduce 
themselves in new and similar ordinances, if ever the 
present shall pass out of use ; as indeed the present are 
reproductions of elder rites. Sacrifice is as old as 
worship itself; but w T hat a difference between the human 
sacrifices of ancient religions and the Hio;h Mass of the 
Church of Rome ! And what a difference between 
that and the commemorative rite of our Protestant 
faith ! 

This also must be conceded, that in no letter is the 
spirit fully and perfectly expressed, and that the letter 
still requires the spirit to interpret its import, and to 
make it available and edifying to those who would use 
it. It is a medium of spiritual life to those only who 
come to it with and in the spirit. Without that touch 
of kindred life, it is dead and deadening. Then it is 
that K the letter killeth." The metallic wire which 
conveys your message to a distant friend, and his to 
you, possesses that capacity in a latent state. No 
manipulation can make it work to that end without the 
couch of the electric fluid which develops its secret 
virtue. Nevertheless, that metallic wire is a necessary 
condition of the communication desired : no other 
medium can supply its place, nor can the communica- 
tion take effect without a medium. So is the letter 
without the spirit, and still an indispensable mediator 
of spirit. 

It is an old controversy, the dispute concerning the 

20 



306 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



letter and the spirit in religion. All parties agree in 
asserting the supremacy of the spirit. There is no 
difference between Quaker and Romanist on that point. 
The only question is, whether any, and how much, of 
letter is essential to spirit. There is always a party 
in the Church who despise the letter and disparage 
ordinances and all external sanctities. They think 
they have Paul on their side, when they quote those 
words of his, "The letter killeth." But Paul is not 
to be so understood. He does not condemn the letter 
as such, — -any and every letter, — but only the laterality 
and empty formality which Judaism in his day had 
come to be. The correct application of this saying will 
depend on what we assume to be the object of the 
word "killeth." It is not the spirit that the letter kill- 
eth ; on the contrary, we have seen that the letter is 
necessary to any continued life of the spirit ; — not the 
spirit, but those who rest in the letter alone ; those 
who separate the letter from the spirit, and make it 
supreme and final. The fault, then, is not in the letter, 
but in those who use it. 

Men may rail as they please at the letter, and dis- 
parage what is outward in religion : but those churches 
are the strongest that have most of it ; strongest not 
only in the way of efficient action and ecclesiastical 
power, but strongest in spiritual vitality. Out of them 
have come the sublimest examples of spiritual life ; 
while those churches which have thought meanlv of the 
letter, and sought to dispense with it, have languished 
and died out. George Fox and his followers were 
filled with perhaps as pure a spirit as eve' animated a 
body of religionists. If spirit without letter could 



THE SPIRIT IX THE LETTER. 



307 



accomplish any thing, how much should have been 
accomplished by them ! Here was spirit with a witness, 
spirit shed with boundless prodigality, — a river of 
God which was full of water. But for want of the 
letter, which it flouted and disdained, comparatively 
little was accomplished by this movement ; while the 
Church of England, against which it contended on 
account of the alleged excess of the letter in its minis- 
trations, has, through that letter, survived to this day, 
and still flourishes with undiminished vitality ; and is at 
this moment to millions of souls an efficient medium of 
spiritual life. I am no friend to the Church of Rome. 
I believe it to be an enemy to social progress and 
intellectual freedom. But what a power it is ! main- 
taining itself to this day, through so many revolutions 
of time and society ; at this moment the strongest 
Church in Christendom, the strongest organized force 
on the globe. And, after deducting its manifold evils 
and corruptions, what a vast amount of spiritual good 
must still be conceded to it ; of how much genuine 
piety and practical holiness, and good works, it is still 
the fruitful and constant source ! What is the reason 
of this continued vitality? The Church of Rome, as a 
leader of human thought, has long since fallen from her 
pride of place ; as a guide and law of the human soul, 
she has long been obsolete ; the vision and the prophecy 
have departed from her : no longer capable of origi- 
nating new thought or generating new life, her sole 
aim is to guard and perpetuate the life of the past. 
The reason of her continued vitality is the fulness and 
breadth of the letter, by which she subsists, and which 
supplies, at least, and will long supply, that traditional 



308 



PwATIOXAL CHRISTIANITY. 



life. When the spirit of the living God was poured 
out upon this Church, in the days of her youth, it was 
gathered into these vessels, which are still so far im- 
pregnated with it that he who comes to them in the 
spirit of faith, by the power of that faith in himself 
awakens the spirit that is latent in them, and partakes 
of its life. 

Where the letter killeth, the fault is not in the letter 
itself, though of that there may be, no doubt, an 
excess. The fault is the want of spirit in us by which 
to interpret its import, and reproduce it in our use. 
Whoever comes with the spirit in himself to the letter 
of his Church will find it living. So much spirit as he 
brings to it, so much spirit will he find in it, and 
give to it in his communications; as Jesus, when he 
took the traditional cup of the Passover at the Last 
Supper, flashed the light of his own spirit over all the 
ages that had handed it down to him, recovering its 
original import, and forward across all the ages that 
were to hand it down, reproduced with new import, to 
us. The letter killeth not the spirit, but the unspir- 
itual ; and the spirit maketh alive, not the spiritual 
only, but every letter which the spirit produced in times 
gone by. Much of the complaint which we hear of the 
oldness of the letter, and much of the impatience of 
rites and forms and scriptures, so far from betokening 
larger spirituality, is often but a proof of weakness of 
faith, — a want of power to penetrate into the soul 
of these things, to interpret their deeper import, and 
recover their latent life. Or it may be that spirit 
abounds in those who contemn the letter, yet not the 
spirit which gave the letter, but one contrary thereto. 



THE SPIRIT IN THE LETTER. 



309 



"Try the spirits whether they be of God." Not every 
spirit that arises in the Church, and discourses of re- 
ligion, is of that denomination. The world of spirits, 
like that of chemic forces, has its negative as well as its 
positive pole. The spirits of God are known by their 
affirmations ; but there is a spirit which denies. So 
Goethe, in his immortal drama, makes Mephistopheles 
describe himself, "I am the spirit that evermore de- 
nies;" a necessary agent, no doubt, in the universal 
and divine economy ; but beware of that spirit, — the 
spirit of negation, opposition, unbelief. Subsidiary, let 
it be, not dominant, in your scheme of life. The test 
of a true spirit is its productiveness. The spirit that 
can originate a letter in which men shall find their 
oracle and comforter and life, or that can interpret such 
a letter when it has grown dim, or re-animate it when 
it is old, — the same is of God. 

In advocating the claims of the letter in religion, 
I am advocating the cause of the spirit. It is not 
a lifeless form, but a living body, as distinguished 
from spirit disembodied, for which I plead. Xot let- 
ter and spirit are opposed, but literal and spiritual 
views and interpretations. 

There is a literal and a spiritual way of viewing and 
handling the doctrines and ordinances of religion, as 
in Paul's day there was a literal and a spiritual Juda- 
ism. "The letter killeth" in doctrine and rite, when 
doctrine and rite are held and interpreted as letter 
alone, in slavish subjection to a formula which should 
be regarded as a servant of thought, and not as a law ; 
an imperfect attempt to articulate truth, and not as the 
limit and measure of truth. Every doctrine which is 



310 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



not an individual conceit, but has the acceptance and 
sanction of the Church, expresses a truth, which, spirit- 
ually interpreted, inaketh alive, but expresses it in a 
letter, which, held in its literal narrowness, killeth. It 
is always on the letter, and not on the spirit, that sects 
have split. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity, 
an ancient and generally received doctrine of the 
Church, — Father, Son, and Spirit, — conceived as a 
kind of theological arithmetic or ecclesiastical mv- 
thology, proposing three Gods, and calling them one, 
— this doctrine is death to reason and common sense ; 
but conceived in the sense of those immortal leaders 
and interpreters of the Church, — Anselm, Thomas 
Aquinas, Lullus, and Abelard, — as expressing a self- 
communicating God, in contradistinction to the incom- 
municable one of Judaism and Mahommedanism, or as 
shadowing forth the encyclic completeness of the God- 
head in its three chief aspects of Power, TTisdoin, and 
Love : or Being, Truth, and Action ; — although no 
part of the gospel, it is a quickening and edifying view 
of the divine nature. The divinity of Christ, under- 
stood, as modern orthodoxy too often conceives it, in a 
sense which violates the humanity of Jesus and insults 
the gospel record; which leaves us but this alternative, 
to conceive of God as a once-limited personality, or to 
conceive of Jesus as a mere apparition by which God 
was manifest ; — so understood, I say, it is a letter 
which killeth. But conceived as ancient orthodoxy 
conceived and settled it, as expressing that unity of the 
human and divine which was realized in Christ, it is a 
truth which K inaketh alive." The doctrine of the 
Atonement, conceived as an historical transaction or 



THE SPIRIT IN THE LETTER. 



311 



commercial arrangement by which God consents to 
waive the action of his penal law, in its application 
to human kind, in consideration of the meritorious 
death of Christ, is death to reason and the moral sense ; 
but conceived as a mediating and reconciling influence 
through the ministry of Christ, by winch the erring and 
alienated nature of man is restored to God, according 
to the saying of Paul, that "God in Christ is reconciling 
the world to himself; " — so conceived, the doctrine is 
life to mind and heart. 

The letter killeth in sacraments and rites, where 
rigid conventionalism precludes spontaneity, or where a 
low utility assumes to be the measure of sanctities, or 
where the symbol becomes a fetish ; or where the ordi- 
nance is viewed as compulsory observance, instead of a 
free communication or free-will offering. Why sprin- 
kle water on a baby's forehead in any other name, 
utility asks, than that of personal cleanliness, — in any 
other way than that of physical ablution? Why, in- 
deed, if those sprinkled drops are all that baptism 
means to you ? If you see in baptism nothing but ritual 
water, it is a dead and deadening formality. But fill 
your mind with the awful truth, that the infant, born 
this day into this phenomenal and vanishing world, as 
one of its phenomena and passages, rising like a bubble 
on the great world-stream to fill a place among the 
shows of time, and to act a part in its processes, is also 
a child and heir of eternity, and is born, at one and the 
same moment with its time-birth, into a world of spirits 
that is real and eternal, a family of God, transcending 
the home-circle, and yet including it ; a kingdom of 
God, transcending and including civil society ; a uni- 



312 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



verse of God, transcending and including the mundane 
sphere, and connecting this breathing creature of to- 
day, this palpitating human animal, with the farthest 
star that looks down on its cradle, with the Church of 
the first-born in the infancy of time and the Church 
of the last-born in time's completeness, and with God, 
the Judge of all, and the Mediator of his love, and 
which knows the life just cast on this shore, and claims 
it as its own, and yearns toward it out of all its heavens ; 
— consider this, and you will see that some open and 
solemn recognition of this fact is no vain ceremony, 
but a just and becoming acknowledgment of the image 
of God bound up in that form, of the immortal destiny 
bound up in that life. And if water, the most univer- 
sal of tangible creations, and therefore fit type of uni- 
versality, is the given and accepted symbol of all this 
in your sphere and time, then should the water be 
sacred in your eyes that bathes a baby's forehead in 
the rite of baptism, administered in the name of the 
Father, the head of this spiritual All ; the Son, the 
connecting link between him and it ; the Spirit, its 
universal bond. And then is infant baptism not the 
mere dash of water on the brow : it is the solemn 
recognition of a new advent, the auspicious presentation 
of the new-comer to the general and august assembly of 
his spiritual home. 

The sacrament of the Supper, like that of baptism, 
has its literal and its spiritual side. He who sees in it 
only a bit of bread and a sip of wine, of which a com- 
pany of church-goers partake in common, will see only 
the letter that killeth, — a lifeless and killing formality. 
But lay to heart the meaning which lies in that word 



THE SPIRIT IN THE LETTER. 



313 



c? communion," and consider that this spiritual All of 
which I have spoken exists for us only as we turn 
toward it the eye of our consciousness, and embrace it 
with our thought and aspiration, and you will see sig- 
nificance and sanctity in whatever promotes that con- 
sciousness or assists that aspiration. To him whose 
faith can take in the idea of the general assembly of 
our common humanity present as one man through all 
its epochs, in all its spheres, the Supper is no vain 
form, but the highest act of the consciousness of so- 
ciety. It is not the commemoration of an individual 
merely that gives this rite its true significance. The 
memory of Christ, as the summit of humanity, is a 
point of meeting for all souls. Whatever symbol 
recalls that memory is a door of communication with 
the Church universal and eternal, comprising whatever 
is noble and brave and wise and holy in the past and 
the present, in heaven and on earth. The thought 
which connects us dwellers in the dust with the noble 
army of the immortals who have shed their light on 
the course of time, and wrought their life into this our 
world, is one of the sublimest revelations of the gospel, 
and deserves expression in the rites of religion. This 
is the expression the Church has given it, showing us, 
in the Eucharist, our part and place in the common 
march and the sacred host. The bread and wine which 
it sets before us are the symbols of immaterial nourish- 
ment, — types of the constant daily feast of life, the 
same for all souls in all worlds, — the feast whose food 
is God's will in daily work, whose guests are the faith- 
ful of every faith and name, whose cheer is love, and 
whose song is praise. 



314 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



The spirit in the letter, the spirit through the letter, 
is a lesson wide as human life, — the reconciliation of 
ideal and actual in human things, If the visible letter 
of our work be no dead letter merely, but a genuine 
fruit of the spirit, a service and a sacrifice, into which 
we breathe the aspiration and good-will, the faith and 
the love, which alone can make it and make us alive, 
it will be an epistle from the heart to the world of our 
time, in which all who behold it shall read the spirit 
that was in us, that possessed our thought and wrought 
in our will, and sought to express itself, not wholly in 
vain, in our activity. Therefore let the spirit that stirs 
in us, ere it evaporate in idle dreams, or degenerate 
into sickly sentimentality, hasten to record itself in 
some visible letter and condign work that shall give it 
effect. If love springs in the breast, let it rush into 
action ; the vision in the brain, let it turn into deed ; 
let the plastic present — the molten metal of the hour 
— receive the impress of our will before it stiffens into 
the past. The world about us is a standing admonition 
to this effect, stamped all over as it is with the letter 
of the spirits that have gone before us, and proving 
that the smallest deed whose grain is good is better 
than the noblest aspiration that dies in the breast. 



VI. 

SAVING FAITH. 



VI. 



SAVING FAITH. 



The oldest controversy in religion respects the com- 
parative value of faith and works. This contest per- 
vades the whole history of man's spiritual progress from 
Abraham down. It arrayed that patriarch against the 
worshippers of Moloch, his contemporaries. It was 
the quarrel between Brahmanism and Buddhism in 
India. It was the quarrel between Judaism and Chris- 
tianity ; later, between Romanism and Protestantism, 
between the Orthodox * and the Liberal. 

It was the earliest topic of dispute in the Christian 
Church. We find the writers of the New Testament 
at variance on this point, maintaining opposite sides of 
this question. Paul maintains the sufficiency of faith : 
James insists on the absolute necessity of works. Sin- 
gularly enough, they both appeal to the same example 
in defence of their respective positions, — the exam- 
ple of the patriarch Abraham. Paul cites him as a 
supereminent instance of faith. "Abraham believed 



* Belief in orthodoxy, when made a condition of salvation, is as much 
a species of "works" as pilgrimages or fasts. 

[317] 



318 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY . 



God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. 
Know ye, therefore, that they who are of faith, the same 
are the children of Abraham." James, on the other 
hand, magnifies Abraham's works — his acts — as the 
real, meritorious, justifying, and saving trait of the pa- 
triarchal example. " Was not Abraham our father 
justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son 
upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with 
his works, and by works was faith made perfect?" To 
this plea it might have been objected, that Abraham, 
according to the story, did not sacrifice his son, al- 
though it was the fashion of that time and country to 
do so. Parents, in that country, sacrificed their first- 
born, as a matter of course. Custom demanded it ; 
religion enjoined it : it was the old Canaanitish worship. 
What distinguished Abraham from his contemporaries 
was, that he did not sacrifice his first-born. It must 
have cost him a struggle to resist the universal custom ; 
but he did resist it : and he did so, not from excess of 
parental fondness, but from a deeper, truer faith. He 
had such faith in God as to believe, contrary to the 
general voice, that a man might be justified without 
that unnatural sacrifice. He believed in the sacredness 
of nature ; he believed in the still small voice of the 
heart, and God speaking in that ; and, though his first 
impulse was to comply with what seemed to be the 
dictate of religion, his second and manlier thought was 
to refrain. If at first he seemed to hear the voice of 
the Lord, saying, "Take now thy son, thine only son, 
Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of 
Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering," he 
listened again in a higher and healthier mood, and 



SAVING FAITH. 



319 



heard the command, "Lay not thine hand upon the 
lad, neither do thou any thing unto him." So I inter- 
pret the old tradition. Abraham did not sacrifice his 
son : he believed that he might forego the sacrifice ; 
and it was " accounted to him for righteousness." If 
faith was shown by a willingness to make the offering, 
it was still more signally proved by withholding it. 
For which requires the greater faith, — to comply with 
custom and tradition, or to refuse compliance? Non- 
conformity, no doubt, may sometimes arise from irre- 
ligion and unbelief ; men may neglect a religious 
ordinance from want of interest and want of faith ; but 
when it is faith that impels dissent, as in the case of 
such earnest and heroic and devout natures as are 
sometimes found in that predicament, that faith is 
unquestionably greater than the faith expressed by any 
works of conformity and tradition. There can be no 
question that the faith of Paul was something superior 
to that of the Jews of Damascus, or the silversmiths 
of Ephesus ; or that the faith of J ohn Huss was su- 
perior to that of the bishops who assisted at the Council 
of Constance ; or Luther's to that of Leo X. ; or the 
faith of George Fox to that of the magistrates of Man- 
chester and Worcester. 

Paul but puts into words what Abraham, three thou- 
sand years before, had uttered in action, when he says, 
"The just shall live by faith." 

When we speak of salvation by faith, we do not 
mean that a man is saved by his orthodoxy. Else 
were the' greater part of the world irrevocably doomed, 
— all the pagan world, and the greater part of the 
Christian, — the greater part, and, I fancy, the better 



320 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY • 



part ; so that the remnant saved would not much com- 
mend the salvation, or exalt the Saviour in the world's 
judgment. There is no saving power in orthodoxy ; 
there is no saving power in mere belief of any kind, 
except as belief may be symptomatic, indicating a 
receptivity of mind ; and that receptivity a vitality 
which certainly is saving, — say, rather, which is sal- 
vation. Then, however, it is not because the belief 
is dogmatically correct that it saves. It may not be 
correct, and yet be saving, so far as the state of mind 
in the believer is concerned. Setting aside the influence 
on the life, a man shall as soon be saved by believing 
with the Hindu in the incarnations of Vishnu, as by 
believing with the Christian in the Word made flesh. 

Salvation by faith means two things. It means that 
man's destiny is determined by what he is, not by what 
he does ; and it means that confidence itself is salva- 
tion. 

1. A man's destiny is determined by what he is, and 
not by what he does. In other words, being is more 
than doing. This is the Christian view of salvation, as 
interpreted by Paul. And so truly and specifically 
Christian is this view, that I am tempted to call it a 
discovery of Christianity, — a spiritual truth which 
Christianity first brought to light. Not what we do, 
but what we are. The old theory, the childish, pagan, 
Jewish theory of salvation, — the theory which still 
most widely prevails, even in Christenaom still pre- 
vails, — is precisely the reverse of this: it puts doing 
before being ; it reckons by works ; it tries a man by 
tale and stint, as a task-master tries a slave. Now, it 
must be granted that human judgments are necessarily 



SAVING FAITH. 



321 



based on the standard of action. What a man does, 
that he is, we say, and say truly ; for, generally speak- 
ing, we know men only by their works. Nay, more, 
in judging of ourselves, we have to apply the same test. 
For who dare flatter himself that he is wise and charita- 
ble and devout, when all his conduct bears witness to 
the contrary ? But observe that this test is safely appli- 
cable only as a negative criterion : it is a very doubtful 
one if we apply it positively. In the absence of all 
works, or where the works are only evil, we are safe in 
inferring moral deficiency or moral corruption ; but we 
cannot reverse the criterion, and rate the internal 
goodness of the man by the external goodness of the 
act, which may or may not be the genuine offspring of 
the heart. 

False religion puts doing before being : it reckons 
by works. It has always been so. I account for it 
thus : The sense of accountableness is instinctive in 
man, and suggests a Power w r hich punishes and re- 
wards, and whose punishments and rewards the childish 
mind conceives to be regulated by the same standard 
which governs earthly authorities, — the parent, the 
task -master, the governor, in appointing theirs, — 
compliance or non-compliance with external require- 
ments. This is the first rude conception of moral 
accountableness, — something done to please God, to 
win his favor and avert his wrath. Hence the inquiry, 

— perplexing, doubtful, anxious, — What must I do to 
be saved? the feeling that something is to be done 
to satisfy and gratify Almighty Power. Hence the 
idea, — so natural, so universal, so hard to eradicate, 

— salvation by w r orks. 

21 



322 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



Judaism was no wiser in this than other religions, 
though wiser and better in so many respects. The 
Jewish idea of human accountableness was that of a 
God who sets his people stints, and rewards and pun- 
ishes accordingly. So Paul described it : K The law is 
not of faith ; but the man that doeth them shall live by 
them." The Jewish religion was a tariff of duties 
levied on its subjects, with corresponding forfeitures, 
exacted ad valorem, for every article omitted or trans- 
gressed. The Christian religion, in its principle and 
essence, averse to all this, as interpreted by Paul, was 
yet converted into this by the misapprehension and 
misguided zeal of the ages following. And, because 
the gospel had set no stints, the Christians of the East, 
and, after them, the Christians of the West, began to 
stint and task themselves with works by which they 
hoped to earn salvation. They made their dwellings in 
deserts and caves ; they spent their lives in saying 
prayers ; they subsisted on the scantiest and poorest 
food ; they wore haircloth ; they scourged their flesh, 
and in every way made life as uncomfortable as bodily 
privation and hardship could make it. In process of 
time, the Church authorities took it upon themselves to 
prescribe these works and impose these stints on 
their subjects. The Church had its tariff of good 
works, and dispensed the salvation of which it assumed 
the administration and control, in conformity with it. 
All Judaism came back with the penances and fasts, 
the pilgrimages and mulcts, and other prescriptions, 
of the Church of Rome. Instead of Christ being 
f 'the end of the law of righteousness," as Paul had 
predicted, a new law of righteousness (or a new law- 



SAVING FAITH. 



323 



righteousness) was instituted in his name. The ex- 
ploded principle, "He that doeth them shall live by 
them," was revived and adopted by the recreant Church 
as the Christian rule. So inveterate is man's proclivity 
to materialize in religion, to convert the most interior 
concerns of the soul into formalities and business trans- 
actions, to look abroad for that which only the heart 
can give, to trade in the unmerchantable. Every 
revival of religion is a protest against this one ever- 
lasting mistake. When Luther, in his younger days, 
as a pious monk and obedient son of the Church, was 
climbing on his knees, according to prescribed usage, 
the sacred staircase of the Lateran Church, he recalled 
the saying, w The just shall live by faith." With that 
recollection began a crisis in the history of religion. 
Christianity was new-born in that hour, — the end, 
once more, ?? of the law of righteousness to every one 
that believeth." 

Has Protestantism, then, entirely outgrown this 
error in all its applications ? We have ceased to rely 
on ecclesiastical good works, on pilgrimages and fasts : 
do we not still cherish the belief in salvation by moral ? 
The Pauline principle applies to these as well as those. 
Moral works are as valueless as ecclesiastical, when 
undertaken upon speculation, as means and conditions 
of salvation. Temperance, chastity, charity, are saving 
graces when they exist as genuine fruits of the Spirit : 
they lose that saving quality when adopted as expe- 
dients and means to an end. Action, like belief, is 
merely symptomatic. The best acts are valuable and 
saving only as authentic exponents of the moral life. 
If they do not truly express that life, if they have any 



324 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



other source than that life, they are spiritually worth- 
less, like promissory notes from an empty vault. 

Not what a man does, but what he is, is his justifica- 
tion or condemnation. Doing may be copied, being 
cannot. All the graces can be imitated ; but grace is 
original in every man in whom it exists. Works may 
be borrowed ; but the heart is man's own. 

Every religion, in turn, repeats the illusion about 
salvation as a bargain with God, a good to be pur- 
chased with a price. But what price can purchase 
heaven, if we come to the question of equivalents, — of 
value earned by service rendered? Who is sufficient 
for such a trade ? Who so rich and strong and good 
as to offer an equivalent for heavenly gifts ? Who has 
that which God so needs, and has so much of it, that 
God will think it worth the while, as a matter of profita- 
ble trade, to sell him eternal blessedness therefor? 
The best of us can do no more than pay, as he goes, for 
all that he receives and has received during all the 
years w T hen he* could do nothing. Can the best of us 
do even that ? 

But, though our good works can be no equivalent, 
may they not be still a condition of salvation, — the 
terms which God has seen fit to exact in return for that 
great boon? Suppose it to be so, what are those 
terms? If there is such a covenant, expressed or un- 
derstood, what is man's part in the contract? Nothing 
less, surely, than obedience to God's law. Now, if 
God has made our well-being to depend on strict obedi- 
ence to the moral law, then our moral welfare is for- 
feited by disobedience to that law, not only by gross 
and continued disobedience, but by all disobedience 



SAVING FAITH . 



325 



whatsoever. Every violation of the moral law violates 
the contract. This is Paul's argument. But every 
one does violate it. "There is none righteous," in that 
sense; "no, not one." "They are all gone out of the 
way." It is impossible not to violate it, Perfect 
obedience is practically impossible. It is what no one 
has yet accomplished, or will accomplish. It is impos- 
sible, because man is not a machine, but a spirit. You 
may construct a machine with such precision that it 
shall perform a given work in a given manner. You 
may construct it with such precision that the action of 
the motive power on each part shall be reduced to a 
certainty ; the function of every wheel and screw may 
be determined and controlled, — so far and no farther, 
so much and no more in a given time. Such a machine 
may be made for a while to perform its whole duty, and 
nothing but its duty. But even a machine will become 
disordered in time, and sin against the law written in 
its constitution, by neglect or transgression. But man 
is not so fashioned, and cannot be so managed, or so 
manage himself. He cannot be made to perform all 
possible duties, and keep the whole law of God, with 
that mechanical exactness with which the hands of a 
clock perform a certain number of revolutions in a given 
time. Let him try the experiment for a single day. 
Let him undertake for one whole day to fulfil the law 
in every minute particular, positive and negative, in 
thought as well as deed ; to do every thing which he 
ought to do, in the way in which he ought to do it ; 
and to do nothing, say nothing, think nothing, which 
he ought not. Let him at night subject the history of 
that day to a rigorous scrutiny ; and, if his conscience is 



326 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



but moderately enlightened, he will discover, that, with 
the best intention, he has not been perfect for one whole 
day, — that the day might possibly have been better 
spent than it was. With the best intention and the 
uttermost endeavor, he has still come short of the mark. 
Man is a poor creature, if he is to be judged in this 
way ; he is less perfect than a steam-engine or a watch. 
w By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified ; for 
all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." 
The Mohammedans have a fable, that the soul, before 
it can enter paradise, must cross a bridge, narrow as 
the edge of a sword, over a gulf of fire ; and that no one 
can be saved who does not endure this test. A good 
illustration, this, of the doctrine of salvation by works. 
To attempt to win heaven by this method is like the 
attempt to cross a gulf of fire on the edge of a sword. 
Forlorn would be our prospect, perdition our doom, if 
our destiny depended solely on our works. 

To remedy this difficulty, to complement this defi- 
ciency of human virtue, theologians, still clinging to 
the notion of a law to which perfect obedience is the 
one indispensible condition of salvation, have proposed 
a substitute in the person of Christ. At first, it was 
the perfect obedience of Christ which answered, instead 
of other men's obedience, and satisfied the law on their 
behalf; more recently, it is the death of Christ, which, 
received as the penalty of sin, serves instead of the 
punishment of sinners, and insures their salvation in 
spite of transgression. It is not my purpose, at pres- 
ent, to criticise these views. The error lies in the 
prior assumption, that salvation is made by divine decree 
to depend on perfect and exact obedience to the moral 



SAYING FAITH. 



327 



law ; that is, on works : in strange and direct contradic- 
tion to the teaching of Paul, who shows that the ground 
of salvation is faith. 

Not what we do, but what we are, is the strength 
of our present, and the hope of our future, if any 
strength there is in us, or any hope for us. There are 
cases, no doubt, in which the actions of men are better 
than their hearts. Whited sepulchres there are, fair 
without, not wanting in good works, but inwardly full 
of treachery and uncleanness. What are the acts of 
such natures worth? Suppose them to be ten times 
fairer than they are, can their works save them? 

But most men, it is to be hoped, are a great deal 
better than their works. Their inward life is more 
divine than all the manifestations of it that have yet 
appeared. The best of men would seem to us less 
perfect than they do, did Ave not impute to them a good- 
ness exceeding all their actions. Jesus would not be 
to us the pure ideal that he is, did we not suppose him 
to be better than his life, divine as that is. We feel 
that what he did was a very small part of w 7 hat he was ; 
his nature was not all expressed in his works : there 
was more virtue in him than went out of him. The 
exigencies of his condition did not exhaust all the ful- 
ness of his divine humanity ; the mould was not equal 
to the form. He stands in our apprehension immeasu- 
rably great behind his works, more honored for what 
he was, in our ideal, than for what he did. Most of us, 
it is to be hoped, are better than our works. It is to 
be hoped there is more goodness in us than appears. 
The conduct is a very imperfect exponent of the inner 
life. Still, if the inner life is sound and strong, it will 



328 RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 

sooner or later justify itself in action, and justify the 
actor. But the justifying power is not in the act, but 
in the faith that produced it. The virtue resides not in 
the fruit, but in the tree. You value the trees in your 
orchard for their fruit-bearing power, not for the fruit 
that hangs on them at the time. That tree must be a 
poor one, which is not worth more than its present 
crop. 

Being before doing, — this is the interior truth which 
lies in the doctrine of salvation by faith. And another 
thing is meant by it. It means, — 

2. That confidence in salvation, in one's own salva- 
tion, is essential to salvation ; nay, more, that it is sal- 
vation. Does this statement seem questionable? I see 
very clearly the abuse that may be made of it ; never- 
theless, it is the doctrine of Paul, if I rightly understand 
him. It is the doctrine of Luther, the best interpreter 
of Paul, because interpreting him out of a kindred 
spirit and similar circumstances. 

Believe that you are saved, and you are saved. Such 
a belief must be the result of an inward experience 
which justifies it. But may there not be a false con- 
fidence, an overweening pharisaic conceit, like that re- 
corded of the Rabbi Jeremias ? "I saw the sons of 
the Feast ; they are very few in number. If there are 
a thousand, I and my son are of the number ; if a 
hundred, I and my son are of the number ; if there are 
two, I and my son are they." To this I reply, Conceit 
is one thing, and belief is another. The faith which this 
view supposes is not bom of conceit, but of verity. 

It is easy to put cases which shall seem to make 
the doctrine ridiculous. There is Graceless, whom 



SAYING FAITH. 



329 



we all know, a thorough worldling, selfish, haul, 
sensual, mean. Suppose that Graceless fancies his 
salvation sure, is he therefore saved ? The presumption 
is, that Graceless bestows no thought upon the matter : 
but, if he does, you may be sure he feels no such confi- 
dence as you suppose ; you may be sure that salvation 
to him looks very problematical. 

There are cases of indifference, — of what may be 
called a negative confidence, the takin^-for-granted of 
ignorance and unbelief. And there are cases in which 
the moral life is apparently too feeble to weather the 
crisis of death, and survive the dissolution of the mortal 
frame. If ever souls so destitute of spiritual life can 
recover themselves from the wreck of mortality, if they 
are to assume a conscious existence hereafter, it is only 
through sore pangs and bitter travail, if at all, that 
the moral life can be born again. There are also 
cases of superstitious terror, of doubt and despair, ex- 
perienced by very worthy people, induced by false 
religion, where the spirit of adoption and filial trust 
has not yet replaced the spirit of bondage and of fear. 
All that is disease. All anxiety about salvation, all 
fears about the future, fears of death and judgment to 
come, in really good people, in those who love and 
seek the right, are morbid affections. The healthy 
soul casts off all that. Conscious of right purposes, 
believing in God, it never troubles itself about the 
hereafter: it commits its future, without misgiving, to 
the infinite Father, not doubting that the Power which 
has brought us thus far, and kept us hitherto, will be as 
near to us in every coming state as here and now, and 
equally able and equally willing to guide and to bless. 



330 RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 

* The perfection of spiritual growth gives us back the 
unconsciousness of primitive man, when life flowed on 
from its source to its close without question or fear of 
the hereafter. I figure to myself a state when this 
unconsciousness, like some lost paradise, shall be re- 
gained ; when the emancipated spirit, having realized 
its own nature by complete development, and having 
outgrown the dreary period of self-questioning, shall be 
conscious of no obligation, shall never hear the "stern 
daughter of the voice of God ; " but follow its own 
impulse with absolute freedom, and never stray; shall 
gravitate to good by divine necessity, and know not 
that it is good, and know no merit in seeking it, because 
there is no evil in its consciousness with w T hich to con- 
trast it. A seraph at work is a child at play, combin- 
ing the earnestness of settled purpose with the freshness 
of immediate impulse, and the glow of a momentary 
mood. Will such an one ask, " What shall I do to 
be saved ? " Will the sun desire to know the method 
of its shining, or the stars how far to cast their ray ; 
or the rushing and rejoicing river, the meaning and 
purpose of its course? The emancipated spirit has 
outgrown all questions ; it derives its knowledge, not 
through the troubled medium of the questioning, grop- 
ing, prying, doubting intellect, but directly from the 
fountain-light of the purified, perfected will. It knows 
by doing, and in knowing does. Knowing, doing, 
willing, loving, are no longer the severed and unequal 
functions of a halting and distracted life, but one undi- 
vided, spontaneous action of a life as serene as the 
source from which it flows. 



VII. 

THE AGE OF GRACE; 

OB, 

ATONEMENT WITHOUT EXPIATION. 



VII. 



ATONEMENT WITHOUT EXPIATION. 



"Die Vernichtung der Slinde, dieser alten Last der Menscheit, und alles 
Glaubens an Busse und Siihnung, ist durch die Offenbarung des Christen- 
thums eigentlich bewirkt worden. * — - No valis. 



The years of the Christian era are technically styled 
years "of grace." The term is used without, I suspect, 
an adequate sense of the import and fitness of that 
designation. The word "grace" — synonymous with 
w pardoning mercy " — denotes a special and character- 
istic trait of the Christian religion ; a fundamental dis- 
tinction between it and other religions. I know of no 
other religion in which pardoning mercy forms a con- 
stitutive, organic element, — none which assures for- 
giveness of sins to penitent souls on the simple condi- 
tion of repentance, and so absolves from the superstitious 
fears which other religions connect with the thought 
of God and the hereafter. 

I find in other religions the principle of propitiation, 
which is quite a different thing. When the gods of 



* The proper effect of the Christian revelation is the annihilation of 
sin, — the ancient burden of humanity, and of all belief in penance and 
expiation. 

[333] 



334 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



the Gentiles were supposed, by their votaries, to be 
incensed by neglect cr transgression, the only way to 
pacify them, to bring back the averted eye of their 
blessing, was to offer animal sacrifices. So only could 
the Powers be propitiated and the sin atoned. Even 
this method was not always effectual. The wrath of 
the Numen, as we read in the old myths, would some- 
times continue to burn with immitigable fury against 
the offender, and even against his remote posterity, as 
in the case of "Pelops' line." And, when effectual, the 
result was not forgiveness, but expiation ; not grace, but 
quittance ; not pardoning mercy, but satisfied ire. So 
the Jehovah of the Hebrews is represented as propitiated 
by sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, which the priest 
was required to offer with exact and complicated rites 
for the sins of the people, that they might be remitted. 
For without blood, by the Law of Moses, there was 
"no remission." The writers of the New Testament, 
and especially the writer to the Hebrews, transfer this 
idea of sacrifice from the old dispensation to the new. 
They represent the blood of Christ as the substitute for 
the blood of bullocks and of lambs. By such repre- 
sentations they describe the subjective fruits of Christ's 
ministry, — of his death as the consummation of that 
ministry, — not the objective nature of his work, viewed 
in its relation to the Godhead. The language is figu- 
rative, not dogmatic. I see not how any other inter- 
pretation could ever have been put upon it by Christians. 
Nothing in the history of opinions is more marvellous 
than that Christian theologians should fail to see, that 
by treating Christ's death as the satisfaction of a debt, 
whether in the sacrificial sense of expiation, or the 



ATONEMENT WITHOUT EXPIATION. 



335 



governmental sense of a shift or compromise, they rule 
out of Christianity precisely that which constitutes its 
most distinctive feature, — Grace. They reduce it to 
the level of the elder religions, in which law and sacrifice 
were predominant elements. In what sense can grace 
be said to have come with Christ, if the Christian's God, 
like the Jew's and the Gentile's, is a Being whose 
enmity is provoked by sin, and propitiated by sacrifice? 
with this remarkable difference, that, while the Gentile 
or Jewish Divinity was alienated from individuals and 
tribes, by individual and ancestral transgressions, and 
reconciled by the blood of bulls and rams, r? the God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" is represented as 
alienated from the entire race of man by the moral 
infirmity of the first pair, and reconciled only by the 
blood of a man. Surely, on this supposition, the 
Christian's God is less gracious than any other. In- 
stead of living under a dispensation of grace, we are 
under a dispensation of inexorable law. Instead of a 
Heavenly Father, we have only a Hebrew Jehovah or 
Olympian Jove. 

The gospel was meant to be a message of glad 
tidings : any system of theology which makes it a mes- 
sage of bad tidings, carries falsehood on its face. Its 
message is grace ; and its grace is peculiar to it, — the 
grace of God, which by faith and repentance absolves 
from sin, and redeems from.the terrors of divine wrath, 
which the consciousness of sin awakens in the soul. 

Religious terrors are incident to all faiths, and com* 
mon to all nations. Christianity alone reveals the grace 
that delivers from this torment ; the perfect love which 
casteth out fear. Let us glance for a moment at other 



336 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



dispensations, and compare them with the gospel in 
this particular. 

If there is any nation of antiquity which might be 
supposed to be exempt from spiritual terrors, it is the 
Greeks, — -a cheerful people, who seem to have lived 
a life of the senses, thoroughly at home, and perfectly 
content with this visible world ; caring little for any 
other ; having no faith and no interest in the spiritual, 
except a poetic and an artistic one. Such is the char- 
acter of the Greeks as represented in poetry and art. 
But go behind these manifestations, inquire from other 
sources the state of mind of the Greeks on the subject 
of religion, and you will find that, where atheism had 
not neutralized the idea of God, the mind was haunted 
by religious fears. Wherever there was enough of 
belief in Divinity to constitute religion, there was 
superstition. A Latin poet praises the atheist Epicu- 
rus for being the first to deliver men from this fear. 
Atheism, in his view, was the only salvation. Plutarch, 
whose writings brino- us nearer to the mind of the 
ancients than any others, has depicted superstition in 
a way which shows what the terrors of religion must 
have been, with no revelation of divine grace to miti- 
gate their gloom. " The victim of spiritual terrors," he 
says, "has no hiding-place, no refuge. Poly crates was 
the scourge of Samos, and Periander of Corinth; but 
one could escape both, and |ind shelter in some free and 
equal government. But he who fears the divine gov- 
ernment as an inexorable, implacable tyranny, whither 
can he remove, or whither can he flee? What land or 
what sea can he find where God is not? Miserable 
man ! in what corner of the world canst thou be so 



ATONEMENT WITHOUT EXPIATION. 



337 



concealed as to think thou hast escaped him ? Slaves 
are allowed by the law, when despairing of their free- 
dom, to demand another sale, in the hope of obtaining 
kinder masters. But superstition allows no change of 
gods ; and where could he find a god whom he would 
not fear, who dreads his father's and his own ? A slave 
may fly to an altar ; and they that are pursued by an 
enemy think themselves safe if they can but lay hold 
of a statue or shrine : but the superstitious fear and 
tremble there most where others, even the most timid, 
take courage. Death itself puts no end to this foolish 
dread. It extends its fears beyond the grave ; and, 
after the sorrows of this world, looks forward to suffer- 
ings that never end. Then open I know not what 
gates of hell from beneath, rivers of fire, Stygian tor- 
rents, judges and tormentors, ghastly spectres and 
endless woes." 

Such was the religion of the most polished nation of 
antiquity, in the experience of those who were spiritual 
enough to regard religion as any thing more than a 
civil institution. It was a religion of fear, in which no 
voice of grace spoke comfort to the stricken and trem- 
bling soul, overwhelmed with the terrors of the invisible. 

Still more remarkable is the absence of grace in the 
two great systems of Eastern and Southern Asia, — 
Brahmanism and its offspring, Buddhism. In these 
religions every sin is unpardonable, and must be expia- 
ted by a separate life in some new state whose condi- 
tions are determined by the errors of this. When the 
soul is separated from the body by death, it migrates 
into some new body, — it may be of a man, or it may 
be of a brute, — in which it must bear the penalty of 

22 



338 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



some particular sin, committed in some former state. 
According to the Buddhist conception, all life is penal. 
The life which we lead in this body is charged with the 
penalties of past transgressions, of which the soul has 
been guilty in unremembered lives antecedent to this ; 
and the life that now is, has its own transgressions to 
be atoned for in lives to come. Thus the soul passes 
from life to life, from body to body ; through form after 
form, grade after grade, of humanity and animality ; 
through princes and beggars, and cats and dogs, and 
creeping things,— ascending and descending ; now soar- 
ing into spiritual day, now steeped in thickest night of 
sense ; still atoning, and sinning and atoning again ; 
until, after ages of mundane experience, every sin ex- 
piated, every blot wiped out, the pilgrim spirit arrives 
at last at its destined goal. And that goal, — the end 
of all these wanderings, the fruit of all this discipline, 
— what is it ? Hear, O Christian ! and compassionate 
the infinite despair which lurks in the doctrine. Anni- 
hilation ! The privilege of non-existence ; extinction of 
the individual being, absorption in the universal Being ; 
the soul dissolved in blank unconsciousness, which, if not 
absolute annihilation, is personal decease in every prac- 
tical sense of the term. The gospel says, "The wages 
of sin is death ; " but the faithful soul " is passed from 
death unto life." Buddhism says, w The wages of sin 
is life ; but the perfect soul passes from life to death. 
Life is penance ; extinction is salvation." 

I find in all these religions no sign of pardoning 
mercy, no trace of those ideas so prominent in the gos- 
pel, — the efficacy of repentance, and forgiveness of 
sins. 



ATONEMENT WITHOUT EXPIATION. 339 



These ideas, it is true, are found in the writings of 
the Jewish dispensation; and, although the religion of 
Moses is characterized as " law 99 in contrast with the 
grace which came by Christ, the Old Testament con- 
tains the nearest approximation to the gospel, the most 
clear and emphatic declarations of forgiveness to be 
found in any of the elder religions. w The Lord is 
merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in 
mercy. He will not always chide, neither will he keep 
his anger for ever. He hath not dealt with us after 
our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities." 
"Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous 
man his thoughts, and turn unto the Lord, and he will 
have mercy upon him ; and to our God, and he will 
abundantly pardon." — "If the wricked will turn from 
all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my 
statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall 
surely live : he shall not die." 

But let it be remembered, that these utterances are 
no part of the Mosaic Law ; the spirit which they 
breathe is not the spirit of Judaism. They are glorious 
anticipations rather of the grace that was to come, and 
such anticipations as were possible only to a prophet of 
the race of Shem ; to a Hebrew standing where Moses 
stood, and seeing, from the spiritual Sinai to which the 
law r giver had brought his people, — its thunders all 
hushed, its blackness and darkness and tempest rolled 
away, — more clearly even than Moses saw, the deep 
things of God. Such anticipations were possible only 
to the shepherd-king whose musing youth the Shepherd 
God had lodged in the green pastures, and led by the 
still waters of his grace, and anointed with the oil of 



340 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



gladness above his fellows ; to the rapt Isaian, whose 
eyes in the midst of "a people of unclean lips" had 
w seen the King, the Lord of hosts/*' and whose mouth 
the seraphim had opened with a coal from the altar ; 
to the brooding exile, to whom, in the land of the 
Chaldeans, by the river Chebar, the heavens were 
opened. 

What was rapt vision, and rare, prophetic appercep- 
tion, known only to elect and inspired souls, under the 
old dispensation, is become the staple and commonplace 
of the new. Christianity is the first and only religion 
that teaches forgiveness of sins on the simple ground of 
repentance, as a fundamental element of its doctrine. 
It is the only religion that makes adequate provision 
for the troubled conscience, and redeems from bottom- 
less despair the soul that is penetrated with a poignant 
sense of sin. That overpowering conviction of sin 
which lashes into madness the souls it masters ; which 
the Greeks impersonated in the fable of the Furies, — 
that malady w r as proof against all the remedies of the. 
ancient religions. It yields only to the healing grace 
of the gospel. 

It is true, Christianity enhances the consciousness of 
sin. "I had not known sin," says Paul, "but by the 
law." Not Moses' law merely, but every clear revela- 
tion of righteousness, develops this knowledge. The 
clearest revelation of righteousness comes by Christ ; 
consequently the profoundest consciousness of sin. No 
one who has not experienced conviction of sin, whether 
in the way of remorse for actual transgression, or a 
general sense of unworthiness, can understand Chris- 
tianity aright. But the same ministration which causes 



ATONEMENT WITHOUT EXPIATIOX. 



341 



the disease supplies also the homoeopathic remedy. If 
the gospel awakens consciousness of sin, it is also 
charged with healing virtue. The soul that is drawn 
with reverential faith and love to the manifestation of 
perfect love in the Crucified, is made partaker of that 
love ; it feels itself relieved of its crushing weight : as 
the heavy-laden, staggering pilgrim, in the beautiful 
fable of Bunyan, when he came at length to a place 
"where there stood a cross, and a little below, in the 
bottom, a sepulchre, his burden loosed from off his 
shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to 
tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth 
of the sepulchre, where it fell in." 

The higher the revelation, the clearer the conscious- 
ness of sin; but the clearer also, and the fuller, the 
absolution. 

But is not forgiveness of sins a doctrine of " Natural 
Religion " which the common understanding is competent 
to discover, and would have discovered without other 
illumination ? It is time this phantasm of a " Natural 
Religion " were exploded. There is no natural knowl- 
edge of divine things, as the word "natural" is com- 
monly understood. We can judge of what might be, 
only by what has been ; and we know that the keenest 
and profoundest minds of antiquity did not attain to this 
idea. Plato, in whom, if anywhere, the student of 
antiquity might expect to find it, knows it not. .The 
Hebrew prophets alone attained, before Christ, to the 
vision of unconditional grace and atonement without 
expiation. 

But, while we claim for the Christian religion the 
peculiarity of a dispensation of grace, it must be con- 



342 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



fessed that the gospel has not been so received and so 
interpreted by the Christian Church. The grace that 
was in it was soon forgotten, and overlaid with dog- 
matic additions and ecclesiastical inventions. It would 
seem as if the Church had made it her special aim to 
obscure and obliterate this characteristic trait of our 
faith, — to assimilate the religion of Jesus to other 
religions, by engrafting upon it a sacrificial, expiatory 
element entirely foreign to its spirit. So completely 
has the Church of Rome misconceived the spirit of Je- 
sus in this particular, that her authorized version of the 
Scripture substitutes for the word "Repent," in the 
Xew Testament, the perverse rendering, "Do penance." 
"From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, 
Do penance ; for the kingdom of God is at hand." 
That one word indicates the change from a religion of 
faith and grace to a religion of legality and of works. 

But this vital truth of the gospel was too deeply rooted 
in the heart of Christendom to be quite choked by the 
tares of theology, or eradicated by priestly tampering. 
The sentiment of the Church re-acted in a very remarka- 
ble manner on its doctrine. The grace which was 
banished from its creed re-appeared in its mythology. 
It incarnated itself in the Virgin Mary - — the supreme 
object of Catholic devotion, more than Christ him- 
self, the divinity adored and implored in the homage 
and prayers of the faithful. The Virgin Mary of the 
Roman Church, the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of 
God, is a providential embodiment of divine grace. 
However we may liken her to the female divinities of 
other religions, Phoenician, Egyptian, Hindoo, Greek, 
with all of which undoubtedly she has some affinity, 



ATONEMENT WITHOUT EXPIATION. 



343 



the most zealous Protestant must confess that the 
Christian goddess represents a character, expresses an 
idea, entirely distinct and infinitely removed from any 
conception embodied in any other religion. It is not 
beauty, nor wisdom, nor purity alone, nor even the 
union of virginity and maternity, — however peculiar to 
Christian mythology, — that Mary represents ; but the 
infinite grace of God, stooping down to human infirm- 
ities and sins ; raining pity from eyes of love on the err- 
ing and abandoned, on the slave of sense and the victim 
of passion ; the exorable mother of the inexorable, com- 
ing between the sinner and the law, softening the 
terrors of absolute rule, directing the applications of 
abstract justice, making justice but means to an end, — 
the means remedial, the end salvation. 

I say, this embodiment was providential. It ful- 
filled an important office to the Christianized Pagan in 
an age that must of necessity have other objects of 
worship beside the Supreme. It was the most effectual, 
if not the only way, in which the idea of divine grace 
could be presented to the unreflecting mind of the- time. 
I believe that this benign form has often stood between 
the sinner and despair. Often, in sorrow and perplexity 
and imminent peril, prayer to the Virgin, and faith in 
the Virgin's intercession, has sustained the sinking soul 
when the thought of the infinite God was too awful 
and too remote for support. The Mother seemed so 
much nearer and more real than the Son ! The devout 
Catholic instinctively flew to her in all time of trial, as 
the child flies to its natural mother for relief. 

Protestantism purged religion of idolatry; but it 
failed, in its early stages, to replace the image of the 



344 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



Virgin with any adequate representation of divine 
grace in its creed. Protestantism, in some of its com- 
munions, developed the ideas of Expiation and Vicari- 
ous Satisfaction and Propitiation of divine wrath, with 
such bleak emphasis, with such unrelenting rigor, as to 
dissipate the idea of grace more effectually than even 
Romanism had done ; and to give us, instead of an 
evangile or message of glad tidings, a bloody cartel of 
vengeance and of doom. 

But one thing Protestantism has done, for which 
Christendom owes it everlasting thanks. It has re- 
stored the written word. It has given us the Scrip- 
tures, and with them the way of escape from its own 
entanglements. It uncovered the well of divine truth 
on which twelve centuries had piled their traditions ; 
and, though the spring was troubled at first by the pro- 
cess, and reflected only distorted images, there have 
not been wanting — Heaven be praised ! — persistent 
spirits who stayed by the waters, and gazed till the 
troubling angel had passed away ; and then saw in the 
crystal depths a human image, and the sun-grace of 
God, and the pure, unfathomable heavens bending over, 
serenely inviting, and ready to embrace. 

Grace is the innermost sense and soul of the Chris- 
tian revelation ; the Alpha and Omega of the " New 
Covenant ; " the hidden pearl of the parable, for which, 
when found, the theologian is willing to give up all his 
theology. A false theology has long ignored it ; but 
it could not remain for ever concealed. May its lustre 
become ever more apparent to Christian faith, until the 
Church of the Crucifixion, which has hitherto prevailed 
in the Christian world, shall be replaced by a Church of 



ATONEMENT WITHOUT EXPIATION. 



345 



the Resurrection ! And as Christendom has borne in its 
body K the dying of the Lord Jesus " in its doctrine of 
Expiation, so may "the life also of Jesus be manifest" 
in its future grateful recognition of a grace without 
expiation ! 



VIII. 

THE "DOUBLE PREDESTINATION. 



VIII. 



THE "DOUBLE PKEDESTINATION. 



The first glance at society discovers a vast inequality 
in the outward condition of men. A second and nearer 
view reveals a less portentous, yet very considerable, 
difference in human desert, or w T hat we call desert, — 
a difference in the moral character and life. If the 
former of these differences exactly corresponded with 
the latter ; if high and low, rich and poor, fortunate 
and unfortunate, happy and wretched, were identical 
with moral good and moral evil, — these contrasts would 
not much trouble us. To the greater part of mankind, 
they would seem quite natural and proper : the why 
and wherefore of them to most minds would present no 
difficulty. The common judgment would be, that some 
are righteous, having chosen righteousness, and there- 
fore deservedly blest ; and that others are wicked, 
having chosen wickedness, and therefore deservedly 
wretched. 

But if any should consider the matter more curiously, 
and inquire more minutely into the causes of that moral 
difference which has wrought this difference of out- 
ward condition, to such the common answer, that the 

[349] 



350 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



good and evil have chosen respectively to be what they 
are, would not suffice. A further question would sug- 
gest itself : " Why have they chosen thus ? why have 
they not rather all chosen what is best, and will bring 
the greatest satisfaction?" And if to this it were 
answered, " These have chosen thus because they were 
wise, and those have chosen otherwise because they 
were foolish, " a new question would immediately arise, 
"Why were these wise, and those foolish?" And the 
answer to that question would carry the inquirer be- 
yond the actors themselves, and beyond the present 
condition of society, back, and still back, from circum- 
stance to circumstance, and from generation to genera- 
tion, — back to the first man. And here a portion of 
these inquirers would halt. The first man, they would 
say, explains every thing. The first man had it all in 
his power, ■ — the future history of the race, the charac- 
ter and condition of all his successors. He made a 
mistake ; he did the wrong thing ; and all his posterity 
have contracted a taint from his guilt, and inherit from 
his fall an irresistible proclivity to evil, by which they 
slide to sure destruction, excepting those whom God 
by his grace shall see fit to elect, and snatch from the 
common doom. 

But some there would be who would not stop here. 
They would ask again, w What possessed the first man 
to blunder so foully, consigning himself and his offspring 
to everlasting death? Something must have ailed him 
to choose as he did." They would seek the reason of 
his mistake in his constitution, which was not made 
proof against such folly; that is, they would seek it in 
the author of that constitution. They would go beyond 



THE "DOUBLE PREDESTINATION." 



351 



the first man, and never stop till they reached the 
First Cause, and would stop there only because they 
must ; because the will of God is the adamantine boun- 
dary-wall of the mind, which no wit can penetrate, 
and which no imagination can scale. 

In thus describing the natural and probable course 
of inquiry concerning the differences in the nature and 
condition of men, I have indicated the actual history 
of the doctrine of "Election," or rather of "Predestina- 
tion," which includes "Election" as one of its terms, 
and includes "Reprobation" as the other. 

It is true, the conditions of the problem are not pre- 
cisely such as I have supposed. The difference in the 
outward condition of men does not exactly correspond 
with the differences in their moral nature. Moral good 
and temporal good, moral and temporal evil, are by no 
means identical or commensurate, the one with the 
other. Prosperity and vice are sometimes conjoined, 
and righteousness is sometimes wedded to adversity. 
But all this, in the eye of theology, is very superficial 
and transient. The doctrine of Predestination over- 
looks all this as insignificant ; it takes its stand in 
eternity, and sees there a portentous and overwhelming 
difference in the human condition. It sees an eternal 
state of outward blessedness on the one hand, and of 
outward misery on the other, corresponding with and 
compensating moral good and evil. 

In the system of religion received by our fathers, 
originating with Augustine in the fifth century, devel- 
oped by Gottschalk in the ninth, revived by Calvin in 
the sixteenth, and consummated by Edwards in the 
eighteenth, —that system which once reigned in this 



352 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



country with despotic sway, which overshadowed the 
New England of the Puritans, and in the shadow of 
which many now living were born and bred, — in that 
system the doctrine of Predestination maintained a con- 
spicuous place. It was held, that God had chosen a 
limited portion of the human race to be for ever blessed ; 
that he chose them before they were born, while as yet 
they existed only in idea ; chose them from all eternity, 
and without regard to any future and foreseen merit 
on their part ; chose them of his own free grace, 
undetermined by any quality in the object, or by any 
consideration out of himself ; chose them by an act of 
irresponsible, absolute will. And this will was irre- 
sistible. No one who was fore-ordained to eternal life 
could fail of his destination, or forfeit the blessedness in 
store for him, through any slip or fault of his own. He 
might sin as other men sin, but his sin w r ould do him no 
mortal harm. His "effectual calling" would triumph 
over all the defects of his nature, and all the evil of his 
life, and carry him to heaven in spite of himself by the 
"final perseverance" of divine grace. 

There is nothing revolting to the moral sense in the 
doctrine thus far. Had it never been developed beyond 
this point, or if nothing more were implied in it, it 
would have had no stronger objection to encounter than 
its want of foundation in the universal consciousness, 
and its want of support from the Scripture. This is the 
favorable side of the doctrine, — "Jacob have I loved." 
Some modern theologians have pretended that it goes 
no farther, and involves nothing more ; that all men are 
capable of attaining that which the elect are sure of 
attaining. All are called, if few are chosen. All are 



THE "DOUBLE PREDESTINATION." 



353 



furnished with the requisite means and opportunities, — 
the only difference being, that some are left to win the 
prize by the unaided exercise of their own powers, 
while others are goaded to it by an irresistible compul- 
sion, stronger than their own wills, and than all the 
powers of a hostile world. But this was not the doc- 
trine held by the fathers. That doctrine had a dark 
and repulsive side, — " Esau have I hated." The 
Church could not fail, in the course of her inquiry, to 
discover, that predestination and extraordinary action of 
divine grace are superfluous, if every man, by the 
ordinary powers of his nature, is capable of attaining 
that for the sake of which this special action is put forth. 
The doctrine, as consummated in the formularies of the 
ninth century, was, that every man who attains to ever- 
lasting life does so by a special act of grace, electing 
him thereto ; and that no man attains to it who is not 
so elected. It follows, that the elective grace is an 
exclusive grace. In the act of choosing a part, is 
included the act of rejecting the rest. And since it 
is undeniable that God might have elected the whole 
race, as well as a part, — no respect being had to the 
qualities and claims of the chosen, — it follows further, 
that Predestination is as much an act of hostility to 
the many who are excluded, as it is of favor to the few 
who are chosen. Again, the Church was too acute 
not to see, that what God alone can prevent, and does 
not prevent, that he ordains. If none can be saved 
without the special election of God, then every one who 
is not elected is condemned by him to endless misery. 
Hence the horrible doctrine of the * e Double Predestina- 
tion" (prasdestinatio duplex), taught by Gottschalk, and 

23 



354 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



confirmed by the Synod of Valence in 855, — the doc- 
trine of Calvin and Edwards. 

Double Predestination includes Reprobation as well 
as Election. Reprobation is the other side, the com- 
plement of Election ; the latter is incomplete without 
the former. Reprobation means that a large portion 
of the human race are foredoomed, for no fault of their 
own, by the arbitrary will of God, to endless misery. 
I say, by no fault of their own. The guilt contracted 
by the sin of the first man was assigned as the reason 
and justification of this decree. But the reason is no 
reason at all, so far as the justice of God is concerned. 
A thorough inquiry will not stop, and did not stop, 
with the sin of the first man. It demands, and de- 
manded, the cause of that sin, the reason of its per- 
mission, the justification of a liability in which such 
portentous consequences were involved. Besides, Rep- 
robation is not the necessary consequence of hereditary 
sin: if it were, then none could be saved. If God 
could elect some to be saved in spite of that sin, then 
he could elect all to be saved in spite of it. And if he 
did not, then Reprobation was purely an act of arbi- 
trary will, undetermined by moral considerations. 

After some vacillation of opinion, St. Augustine 
denied all efficacy to the human will, and ascribed the 
work of salvation to God alone, whose grace and elec- 
tion are entirely independent of any merit or quality in 
the subject. In other words, he maintained an absolute 
Predestination. His antagonist, Pelagius, starting from 
different premises and reasoning from a different expe- 
rience, maintained, on the contrary, the power of all 
men to become good and holy. The Church decided in 



THE "DOUBLE PREDESTINATION." 



355 



favor of Augustine, and the doctrine of Pelagius was 
repudiated as heresy. Augustine, however, did not 
consummate the doctrine of Predestination. His opinion 
was rather a practical than a speculative principle. Af- 
ter the lapse of three hundred years, the discussion was 
revived by a German monk, — a man of subtler intellect, 
if less elevated nature, than Augustine, who applied the 
principle of Predestination not merely, as heretofore, to 
the good, but also to the wicked. The one, he main- 
tained, follows necessarily from the other. If a portion 
of the race are predestined to salvation, the rest are as 
certainly predestined to damnation. This Double Pre- 
destination was finally adopted by the Church. It was 
re-affirmed by Calvin after the Reformation, and car- 
ried out to its last results by Jonathan Edwards, who 
frankly admits that the doctrine makes God the author 
of sin. 

There is something sublime in the uncompromising 
and inexorable consistency of this doctrine, and in the 
heroic disregard of consequences with w T hich those who 
taught it carried out their reasoning, and pursued their 
principle to its final and legitimate result. And they 
seemed to find a ground and warrant for their doctrine 
in the sacred books. "For whom he did foreknow, he 
also did predestinate. . . . Moreover, whom he did pre- 
destinate, them he also called." There is a kind of elec- 
tion affirmed in the New Testament. Christians are 
called the "elect of God." They seemed to be singled 
out from the rest of mankind, and made the recipients 
of peculiar and exclusive privileges and blessings. This 
election is justified by Paul, who finds a precedent for 
it in Hebrew history, in the case of Jacob and Esau. 



356 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



Before Jacob and Esau were born, consequently with- 
out regard to the character of either, it was ordained 
that the elder should serve the younger. w The children 
being not yet born, neither having done any good or 
evil, that the purpose of God, according to election 
might stand, not of works, but of him that willeth." 
,f As it is written, Jacob have I loved, and Esau have 
I hated." That is, according to the true rendering of 
the Hebrew idiom, Jacob have I preferred before Esau, 
and distinguished with peculiar blessings. 

Here was an instance of actual Predestination or 
Election in the world's history. It stands forth the 
representative of many others,— an instance of what 
has been in the world's history, and what is still, — an 
example of preference and divine favor wholly irrespect- 
ive of personal merit. Jacob is no better than Esau; 
in many respects he is worse, — cunning, perfidious ; a 
man entitled to no preference on the score of merit ; and 
yet he is preferred. He is made inheritor of the pro- 
mises ; he is placed in the line of divine communications ; 
through him is transmitted the Abrahamic blessing, 
while his brother is set aside, — ignoble head of an 
inferior line. 

St. Paul adduces this instance, by way of precedent, 
to illustrate God's method in the distribution of civil 
blessings. It was an instance of what was then taking 
place in the election of those who were called to be 
disciples of Christ. Christians were called without 
regard to any previous claim, — Gentile and Jew, 
those who had performed the works of the law, and 
those who were without the law, — that the elective 
purpose Pf might stand, not of man's works, but of God's 



THE "DOUBLE PREDESTINATION." 



357 



will." — "For he saith to Moses, f I will have mercy on 
whom I will, and compassion on whom I will.' So, 
then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that run- 
neth, but of God, that showeth mercy." -This was the 
order of Providence then, and this is the order of 
Providence now. God's government is not a system 
of equality as it regards the privileges and blessings 
enjoyed by different orders of men : on the contrary, 
it is a system of seeming partiality, — so far as we 
can see, of arbitrary election; that is, an election 
entirely irrespective of the qualities and claims of the 
chosen, and undetermined by any law intelligible to 
us. All creatures have by nature an equal claim on 
the Universal Love ; all are children of one Father ; 
but how different the rank assigned to them in his 
household ! One is created an angel, another is created 
a worm. Or, confining ourselves within the limits of 
the human family, some are elected to the highest cul- 
ture and the noblest works of which human nature is 
capable ; others are condemned to life-long ignorance 
and vice. 

Observe this election on the large historic scale, as 
manifested in the lot of nations. One nation is set in 
the van of humanity, nurtured in Christian schools and 
churches, and blest with every advantage of moral 
and scientific culture ; another is overshadowed by 
gloomy superstitions, and crushed by inexorable despo- 
tism. Compare our Protestant Christendom of to-day 
with the polities of some rude Polynesian tribe, and 
learn how wide the scope and how vast the distinction 
embraced in the scheme of divine election, as applied to 
nations. 



358 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



But the fact and import of this election are most 
striking when we view it in its application to individuals. 
Suppose two souls, two individual entities, not yet 
incorporated in human frames, existing as yet only in 
the vision and will of the parent Mind. Both are equal 
in the sight of God ; neither possesses any claim above 
the other, "being not yet born," as the apostle says; 
"neither having done any good or evil." What shall 
be the calling and destination respectively of these two 
souls? The one shall be launched into life in a civil- 
ized land, illumined by the light of the gospel, ennobled 
by science, adorned by art, rich in historic traditions, 
rich in sacred memories, abounding in the means of cul- 
ture, affording scope and supplying motive to the nobler 
faculties of mind and heart. It shall draw its earliest 
nurture from the bosom of Christian parents, and come 
forth taught and stimulated by sages and poets and 
heroes and saints, imbued with all human learning, in- 
stituted in all useful arts. The other shall be cast on a 
savage shore, anions savage children of the desert, in 
some unexplored island of the Indian Ocean, or some 
African wild, neighbor to the tiger and the ape ; where 
hopeless night broods over the mind, and God's truth is 
quenched in thick superstition which not a ray of the 
everlasting light can pierce ; where no science is learned 
but that which teaches the fingers to fight, no art 
acquired but that of fashioning and handling the bow 
and the spear, no calling known but that of violence, 
and no good pursued but the gross satisfactions of 
appetite and last. Or, again, the one shall be lodged in 
a sickly and deformed frame, and crawl through life with 
labor and sorrow, and a crushing sense of inferiority ; 



THE ''DOUBLE PREDESTINATION." 



359 



the other shall incarnate itself in strength and beauty, 
and, with full command of its powers, rejoice in the 
buoyancy of perfect health, — every sinew tense, and 
every nerve in tune, — a body worthy to be the temple 
of the Lord. Yet, again, the one shall be born into the 
lap of wealth and social refinement, born to high station 
and command : the other shall enter humanity by the 
way of penury and want and grovelling vice, and see 
no way open but that of shame and guilt. These are 
no imaginary differences, but well-known and familiar 
facts. They present a curious theme for contemplation, 
when we think what a different value life is likely to 
have for individuals so divided in the circumstances of 
their lot. But they assume a more serious aspect, — 
these inequalities, if we attempt to trace their conse- 
quences in the moral destiny of those who are thus 
distinguished. Consider the influence of circumstance 
on character. Suppose two youths just entering the 
world, — the one a child of intelligent Christian parents, 
well circumstanced, able and willing to give their off- 
spring such an education as shall best secure his moral 
well-being ; the other sprung from the bosom of want 
and vice in some squalid den of a populous city, brought 
up in the daily contemplation of evil examples, — every 
known influence that acts upon him unfavorable to 
moral growth. "What are likely to be the lives of these 
two subjects ? Let any one attempt from these elements 
to calculate their future history ; what will he predict ? 
For the one, a useful and honorable career, life-long 
progress in well-doing ; for the other, a life of infamy 
and shame, constant declension into gulf after gulf of 
depravity and ruin. But this is not all ; it is not the 



3G0 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



worst : it might seem to be the least and most favorable 
part of the calculation. We are taught that the con- 
sequences of our actions extend beyond this mortal 
world ; that this life delivers us over to another, like this 
in its moral conditions, subject to the same law, taking 
up and carrying on the same process of development ; 
that the next world finds us as this world leaves us : 
he that leaves this with pure habits, unspotted by sin, 
enters a circle of pure spirits, and engages himself to 
eternal purity hereafter; he that leaves it in sin, in sin 
begins his future course ; and every step which he takes 
in that course, binds him to inextricable entanglements 
of guilt and woe, and renders his recovery more diffi- 
cult and doubtful. So that, for aught that we can see, 
the eternal destiny of a human soul may be determined 
by the accident of his earthly condition. According to 
the circumstances of his birth, he might seem to be 
fore-ordained to eternal life, or foredoomed to endless 
woe. And is not this the very election and predestina- 
tion which the fathers taught ; put in a different shape, 
deduced by a different process from different premises, 
but the same in substance and effect? So it would 
seem ; and it may be that some such contemplation of 
the facts of life, some deep impression of the huge 
inequalities of the human condition, lay at the foundation 
of the old doctrine, or was intimately connected with it. 
But this view of life, so far as the happiness and moral 
destiny of the individual are concerned, is a mere illu- 
sion, a fallacy, which confounds the certainty of the 
facts observed with the certainty of the inferences from 
them. The facts are certain ; the inferences are merely 
plausible, and will not bear examination. The election 



THE "DOUBLE PREDESTINATION." 



361 



affirmed in the New Testament is election only as to 
means and opportunities and external condition. And 
this is not a theory, but a fact ; an election actually 
observed; a matter of history. But this is all. The 
distinction goes no further than outward advantages 
and blessings. Xo other election is taught in the Scrip- 
ture, no other is inferrible from the facts of life. A 
closer examination will show that this election is quite 
superficial ; it does not touch the interior life. It does 
not affect, or does not necessarily affect, in the way 
supposed, the happiness or moral destiny of the chosen 
or rejected. Happiness and character may bear an 
inverse ratio to circumstance. The most favorable, as 
we reckon, may prove the least so. 

1. As it regards happiness, who that has studied 
human nature and human life does not know that hap- 
piness is a thing which defies calculation ? It is found 
in greatest abundance there where there seemed least 
reason to expect it. It has nothing to do with circum- 
stances. It would even seem as if a kind God, by way 
of compensation, had bestowed most of it there where 
circumstances are most forbidding ; so that the poorer 
and the more degraded a man's condition, provided the 
poverty and degradation are native, and not a reverse 
of fortune, the happier he is ; and, on the other hand, 
the higher we ascend in the scale of life, the more 
thoughtful, serious, ay, the more sad, life becomes. 
Indeed, I figure to myself the blessedness ascribed to 
higher natures, the blessedness of heaven, to be very 
different from what we call happiness, — as far from glee 
as from mourning. A divine compensation is for ever 
equalizing the human condition, reconciling its opposite 



362 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



extremes, and awarding to each individual, in his inte- 
riors, so much and no more of secret satisfaction as his 
own consciousness enables and entitles him to receive, 
without respect to circumstance or person. Wbeir the 
tide rushes inland, every channel is flooded ; the river 
which bears a thousand tons on its bosom is no fuller 
than the creek on which the schoolboy launches his 
mimic craft. When the dew of heaven distils, all 
plants partake of the blessing, — the vilest weed that lifts 
its despised head above the soil, as well as the queenly 
rose and the trellised vine. And the mercy of God is 
that tide and that dew which floods and blesses all, 
both small and great, both splendid and vile, with its 
equal and impartial largess. Nothing is more delusive 
than to judge of another's consciousness by his visible 
condition. Do you wonder how the beggar, the pris- 
oner, the slave, the maimed and diseased, can endure 
the burden of being ; or whence, in their hard estate, 
they derive so much of satisfaction as the heart requires 
to maintain its life ? — ask where the berry in the arid 
rock-cleft, with its minimum of earth and moisture, 
finds the sweetness that circulates in its veins? — ask 
w r hence the flower that springs from corruption gets its 
spotless raiment and its balmy breath? — ask whence 
the pearl-fish, in the unsunned darkness of the deep, 
derives the rainbow hues that paint the walls of its cell? 
The heart is a chemist, more subtile than berry or 
flower or pearl. In the hardest and most arid condi- 
tions it will find some nurture. If the world of its 
surrounding yields nothing, it will push its roots 
through into another, and draw in heaven by the migh- 
ty attraction of a mighty need. 



THE "DOUBLE PREDESTINATION." 



3G3 



Happiness is not confined to the favored of fortune. 
Jacob may be preferred before Esau ; but Jacob is not 
therefore the happier man. The actual, historical Ja- 
cob of the Old Testament, we know, was not. Turn to 
the record, and see. He triumphed over his brother ; 
but his triumph had a root of bitterness which avenged 
its wrong. He stole a blessing ; but a curse went with 
it. He was doomed to be most sorely afflicted there 
where chiefly he had garnered his heart and hope ; and 
he spoke the bitterness of his soul when he said, "Few 
and evil have been the years of my pilgrimage." On 
the other hand, Esau may be postponed and cast out, 
but not therefore for ever miserable. What did the 
Esau of history when he found himself defrauded of his 
rights ? " He cried with an exceeding bitter cry, and 
said unto his father, f Bless me also, even me, O my 
father!' And he said, f Thy brother came with sub- 
tlety, and hath taken away thy blessing.' And he said, 
? Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me ? Hast thou 
but one blessing, my father? Bless me also, even me.'" 
This is the cry which still goes up from the poor, the 
injured, the oppressed, to the mercy-seat. f * Bless me 
also, even me also, O my Father ! Though poor and 
vile, let not me be excluded from a share in the general 
joy." And the prayer is heard. The Father has 
other blessings besides outward distinctions and the 
prizes of the world. He opens a compensating fountain 
of joy in the heart of the desolate, over which the world 
has no power, and entertains it with the hope of deliv- 
erance : " And it shall come to pass when thou shalt 
have the dominion, that thou shalt break thy brother's 
yoke from oft thy neck." So much for the influence of 
circumstance on happiness. 



364 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



2. As it regards the character and moral destiny of 
the individual, these two are less affected by the in- 
equalities of fortune — that is, they are less affected by 
adverse circumstances — than we are apt to suppose. 
There is a superficial morality induced by prosperous 
fortunes, — a correctness of deportment; an external 
decorum which cannot be too highly prized in its social 
bearings, but which has no relation, or an inverse one, 
to the inner man, — which is not the fruit of the heart, 
but its covering. So there is a superficial depravity 
induced by adverse circumstances, a contempt of law 
and social conventions, an external fiagitiousness, which 
looks bad, and which society must punish in self-defence, 
but which does not necessarily involve any great de- 
pravity of heart. Many a one who leads a profligate 
life, from having been "to the manner born, " may be 
less infected with sin in the core of his heart, than a 
hundred others of decent reputation all around him. 
Jesus, who knew what was in man, who could see mur- 
der and adultery in the heart, beneath a canonical robe, 
and who could see a soul of goodness in the fallen pros- 
titute, told the wealthy and respectable Pharisees of his 
day, "Behold, the publicans and the harlots go into the 
kingdom of heaven before you." The moral worth and 
the moral destiny of men are not determined by the 
means of moral culture, allotted or withheld, or the 
manners corresponding thereto ; but by something in 
the heart, which only God can see ; by a certain propor- 
tion, which only God can estimate, between the means 
and the life. 

But suppose a deeper corruption of the moral nature, 
instead of this superficial depravity. Suppose the vie- 



THE "DOUBLE PREDESTINATION." 30") 

tim of adverse fortune to have sinned, not only against 
social conventions, but against the witness in the heart, 
and to have perished in the midst of his sins. What 
right have we to limit the redeeming power of God to 
the present life, or to think that, because the requisite 
means of reformation have not been afforded in this 
world, they will not be afforded hereafter? For that 
very reason, that this life has not furnished them,** 
there must be some state that will. There must be 
some provision in the immeasurable future, some crisis 
there must be in the history of that soul, which shall 
reach its necessity, and place before it the same oppor- 
tunties of moral culture which Heaven has vouchsafed 
to the most favored in this world. So, too, I can see 
no reason why the character which has never been sorely 
tempted in this world may not be so tempted in some 
future state : on the contrary, I see every reason to 
suppose that it will. That virtue is of little worth, — 
it can never be a heaven and a fountain of life to the 
soul, — which has not been tried to the uttermost point 
of endurance. Somewhere in the course of its history, 
every soul must enjoy the means of grace ; and, some- 
where in the course of its history, every soul must be 
tried with fire. 

An equal Love has ordained the inequalities of life. 
Esau is as dear to God as Jacob. He loves the wild 
Ishmaelite as well as the polished Israel of the old cove- 
nant or the new, the vagabond and the outlaw as well 
as the saint. Meanwhile, these inequalities are lessons 
to us of courage, and patience, and gratitude, and 
trust. They teach reliance on the Wisdom that arranges 
the conditions of life, allotting to each the portion most 



366 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



needful for the discipline of each, whether prosperous 
or adverse ; they admonish us to make the most of our 
position by brave endeavors to meet its requirements, 
by patient endurance of its evil, and by free communi- 
cation of its good. 



IX. 

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IMMORTALITY. 



IX. 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IMMORTALITY. 



"Dust and clay, 

Man's ancient wear, 
Here you must stay, 
But I elsewhere ! " — Yaughan. 



It is commonly supposed, that the doctrine of a future 
life is one of the specialties of the Christian revelation. 
Gibbon ascribes to it, among other causes, the early con- 
quests of the gospel. But had the historian been chal- 
lenged to produce from the gospel record the statement 
of this doctrine, in clear and explicit terms, as a uni- 
versal spiritual truth, embracing the whole family of 
man in its import and application, he would have been 
at a loss to recall a proposition answering to his own 
impression of the place which that doctrine occupies in 
the Christian scheme. Had he turned to the New Tes- 
tament to refresh his knowledge of its teachings on this 
subject, he would have found the resurrection of Christ 
asserted by all the four Gospels, pervading the Acts of 
the Apostles with its glad report, and enlivening the 
Epistles with its heavenly promise. But a critical ex- 

24 [369] 



370 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



animation would have shown him, that the promise was 
bounded in its application by the household of faith, 
and had no validity in the apprehension of the writers 
of the New Testament beyond those bounds ; that when 
Jesus says, "Because I live, ye shall live also," he is 
thinking only of his own ; and that Paul had only be- 
lievers in view when he wrote, "As in Adam all die, so 
in Christ shall all be made alive." He would find the 
immortality of the soul, as a universal psychological 
fact, if seemingly intimated, nowhere explicitly declared. 
I recall, at this moment, but two passages* in which that 
doctrine is even intimated. One is that saying of Jesus, 
in which he deduces the fact of a future life from the 
phrase, "The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." 
"God is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for 
all live unto him." A most noteworthy saying ! "All 
live unto him." The world of past generations is not a 
charnel, or world of dust, but a world of life and 
thought, of energy and love. The Spirit of God strikes 
through it and enfolds it no less than our human world 
of to-day. The other instance which occurs to me is a 
passage in the well-known 15th chapter of 1st Corin- 
thians, "If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is 
Christ not risen ; " words which represent the truth of 
the resurrection of Christ as depending on the general 
fact of a resurrection, — which make it a particular in- 
stance under a general law. 

Elsewhere in the New Testament, so far as I remem- 
ber, the future life is regarded, not as a natural event, 

— a consequence resulting from the nature of the soul, 

— but as something achieved by faith, or communicated 
by God through Christ. 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IMMORTALITY . 371 



Thus envisaged, the doctrine of a life to come un- 
questionably occupied a large place, and constituted an 
active ingredient, in the consciousness of the early 
Church. You can hardly open the New Testament 
without lighting on some allusion to it, or some hint of 
the speedy coming of the Son of Man, whose advent 
was to raise his departed followers from the dead. 
The Church of that age, still glowing with the recent 
Sun which rose on the first great Easter morning with 
a right ascension, and, it may be, still ascends, appears 
to have lost the consciousness of death. For Christians 
it did not exist. They might " fall asleep in Christ," as 
Paul termed it, but only to "be caught up with him in 
the clouds/' Their sun of life might decline, but only 
as the sun of the, arctic midsummer skirts an horizon 
where evening and morning club their splendors to fur- 
nish an unbroken day. In their horizon there was no 
dissolution of the continuity of life. Day blossomed 
into day, mortal was swallowed up in immortality. 
Friends who had seemed to depart, putting off this cor- 
ruptible, came beaming back, and swelled the cloud of 
immortal witnesses that filled the Christian's heaven. 
Believers felt that they had come " to an innumerable 
company of angels ; " that there was but one K family in 
earth and heaven ; " and one of them was bold enough 
to say, that Christ had " abolished death." 

These heats could not last ; the vision faded ; the 
senses resumed their sway, doubt returned, and death 
returned ; and, even within the covers of the Xew Testa- 
ment, we hear the complaint, "Where is the promise 
of his coming? for, since the fathers fell asleep, all 
things continue as they were from the beginning of ere- 



372 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



ation." We cannot, in our age, appropriate with the 
fervor of young Christendom the brave saying, that 
Christ has " abolished death ; " but this we may say, 
that the modern Christian world is possessed with a bet- 
ter view of the future of the soul, and a better hope, 
than the ancient. The ancients believed in a life to 
come ; but it was not the hereafter contemplated by the 
Christian. The difference between the two is fitly ex- 
pressed by the word " resurrection ; " understanding by 
that term, not the resuscitation of the mortal body, but 
the resurrection of the soul from Hades. The state of 
the departed, as conceived by the ancients, — except for 
the few who were raised to the fellowship of the gods, 
— was no improvement on this present life. It was 
human life relieved, indeed, in the case of the good, from 
mortal cares and pains ; but still occupied, in a dim and 
dreamy way, with earthly pleasures and pursuits. Its 
locality was not like the Christian's heaven, the dwell- 
ing-place of divinity ; it was not above, but below, in 
the bow^els of the earth, or in distant isles of the sea, 
from which there was no return. With all its delights, 
which were mostly sensual, it was still a prison ; at best, 
a peaceful asylum whose inmates lived in the past, and 
dreamed over again the scenes of their mortality, with 
no development and no progress, — an after -shine 
of the sun that was set, or pensive moonlight, not a 
new day. The Christian hereafter is Resurrection; 
that is, spiritual new-birth, life more abundant, intenser 
action, endless progress, — the mortal life quickened 
into life eternal. 

I am speaking of the Christian ideal of the future des- 
tiny. A very different thing is the Church doctrine of 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IMMORTALITY". 



373 



the life to come. The doctrine of the Church, in most 
of its communions, is that of a bodily resurrection, — a 
simultaneous resurrection of all the dead at the end of 
the world, accompanied by a general judgment, which 
shall fix the condition of each soul for all coming time. 
The state of the departed previous to that event is a 
question on which different communions hold very dif- 
ferent opinions. The Church of Rome affirms the ex- 
istence of an intermediate spiritual world, in which all 
but the saints are confined until the general resurrection. 
The doctrine of Protestant sects in relation to this point 
— of those, I mean, which hold the resurrection of the 
body, and do not admit the intermediate world — is 
painfully confused and wavering. The more consistent 
among them suppose that the soul exists in an uncon- 
scious state ; that it sleeps with the body until with the 
body it is raised at the last day. This is the view em- 
bodied in the popular hymn, — 

u Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb ! 
Take this new treasure to thy trust." 

Others conceive that the disembodied spirit enters at 
once on a state of happiness or misery, according to its 
character and life in the flesh, — a view which nullifies 
the point and significance of the doctrine of a bodily 
resurrection and the general judgment, by making both 
seem ridiculously superfluous. For, if the soul can ex- 
ist for ao;es, and fulfil the conditions of a moral agent 
without a body, why should the perished body be re- 
vived and re-annexed? And, if it has already reaped 
the reward of its deeds, of what use the verdict after 
the award? 



374 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



This diversity and confusion in the doctrine of the 
Church is due, in part, to the conflict of views repre- 
sented in the New Testament itself, and the vain attempt 
to combine in one theory the civil and personal elements 
in these representations, — the passages relating to the 
great historical crisis in human society, and passages 
relating to individual destiny. It is impossible, I be- 
lieve, to deduce from the Scriptures of the New Testa- 
ment a doctrine of the life to come, which shall fit all 
the texts and satisfy all the requirements of the subject ; 
which shall harmonize the Apocalyptic vision of the 
"new earth" and the New Jerusalem upon it, with 
Paul's conception of being raised from the dead and 
caught up into the clouds to dwell with the Lord in the 
air ; which shall harmonize any doctrine of final resur- 
rection with the words of Jesus to the thief on the cross, 
w This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." 

Whilst the doctrine of the Orthodox Church, mis- 
taking the import of the resurrection, and substituting 
a bodily rising for a spiritual one, perverts and degrades 
the Christian idea, the popular belief in those com- 
munions which reject the dogmatic impositions of Or- 
thodoxy is false to the moral aspects of that idea, in 
supposing that immortality is the natural heritage of 
man, — that man is born to it as the sparks fly up- 
ward ; that life eternal is the sure destination of every 
soul ; that for every soul the attainment of the highest 
and best is only a question of time ; in other words, 
that in every human animal, not only the possibility but 
the fact of a spiritual man is enfolded. This represen- 
tation wears, to the superficial thought, an aspect of 
plausibility which vanishes on closer inspection. What 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IMMORTALITY. 375 



is gained in diffusion is lost in depth. What is gained 
in popularity is lost in aspiration. On its Godward 
side, the Universalist doctrine embodies a precious and 
momentous truth ; to wit, the impartiality and limitless 
scope of divine love. On its human side, it errs in not 
recognizing the proprieties and fatalities of the individ- 
ual soul. 

The Christian idea of immortality is essentially a 
moral idea. Only the moral and spiritual in man is 
supposed by it to be capable of resurrection ; whatso- 
ever is not concluded in that category is mortal. So I 
interpret that saying of Paul, "As in Adam all die, so 
in Christ shall all be made alive." 

Adam and Christ represent respectively different sides 
of human nature, — different phases or principles in 
man, — the natural (or animal), which is mortal; the 
spiritual, which is immortal. We cannot say, that the 
spiritual in man, as source and ground of everlasting 
life, originated, historically speaking, with Christ ; that 
before the Christian era there was no spiritual, eternal 
life. By Christ we must here understand, not the his- 
torical, but the eternal Christ, the ideal man, the divine 
man. What is put chronologically, we must under- 
stand spiritually. "In Christ shall all be made alive. " 
In Christ all are made alive. In and through the 
spirit which Christ represents, man is made partaker of 
eternal life; all men — whether nominally Christians, 
or whatsoever name they bear ; whether contemporary 
with Jesus, or ages after or ages before — who partake 
in that spirit, in the degree in which they partake of it. 

Immortality is a thing of degrees. All souls are 
immortal in some sense ; none are utterly annihilated at 



376 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY . 



death. Even animal souls are not annihilated, but sur- 
vive, with unknown conditions, the dissolution of the 
bodily frame. I assume the existence of the entity 
called "soul," and that what we so name is not, as some 
have pretended, the result of organism, but rather the 
foundation and cause of organism, — the central force 
of the system it inhabits. The greater this central 
force, the more perfect the organization, the more im- 
mortal the soul, though, perhaps, the more mortal 
the body. In animals of a low type, the weakness of 
the central principle is compensated by increased vitality 
of the members. Instead of a single regent soul, these 
forms are pervaded by a general diffusive life, or multi- 
plicity of inferior, unconscious souls, distributed equally 
through the whole economy. The unconscious vitality 
is great, even to the reproduction of perished members ; 
but the individual, voluntary energy is small. The snail 
and the earthworm, it is probable, do not define their 
own individuality by an act of consciousness embracing 
the entire organism, and distinguishing it from other 
bodies. Immortality cannot be predicated of such na- 
tures in any other sense than the indestructibleness of 
the atoms which compose them. 

As we rise in the scale of being, life becomes more 
central and individual ; one monarch soul possesses and 
dominates the entire frame, subjecting and subordinat- 
ing all its organs, and enduing all its members with 
its own vitality. That soul, we may suppose, is im- 
mortal in a higher sense than that of essential inde- 
structibleness. Not only is it indestructible in its 
essence, but it enters after death, as soul, as central 
vital principal, into new forms of animal life. 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IMMORTALITY, 377 



The immortality which we ascribe to the higher ani- 
mals, we cannot of course deny to the natural or animal 
man. But neither can we attribute much more to the 
animal man in this regard than we concede to other 
animals. His intellectual superiority, the faculty of 
speech, the powers by which he acquires and applies 
scientific knowledge, his philosophic insight, his capacity 
for abstract truth, his converse with ideas, creative 
genius, poetry and art, — all the mental traits and en- 
dowments which distinguish a Shakspeare or a Raphael 
prove nothing on this head. These have no immor- 
tality other than that of the works they produce, and 
confer none other on the author of those works than the 
deathless name which they hand down. Splendid as 
these endowments are, thev contain no srerm of ever- 
lasting life, no intimation of their reproduction in a 
future world. There is no reason to suppose that the 
Shakspeares and Raphaels of this life will be Shaks- 
peares and Raphaels in the life to come. The qualities 
of genius are rightly termed " gifts ; " thej T are not the 
soul's own, not spiritual property, not part and parcel 
of the inmost nature ; but extrinsic, incidental, like per- 
sonal beauty, muscular strength, an ear for music, or a 
sweet voice ; they are not of the nature of substance, 
but of accident ; they are detachable ; they pertain to 
the tabernacle that is dissolved, to the natural and cor- 
ruptible which is put off in death, not to the spiritual 
which is raised. 

Only through his moral and spiritual nature can man 
become partaker of an immortality essentially different 
from that of the brute, — the immortality of which 
Christ is the prototype, " the first-fruits." Only through 



378 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



the spirit does he lay hold of everlasting life. Only the 
highest can inherit the highest. The Holy Spirit is the 
summit of all being, the top of all imagining ; the 
source and mark, the beginning and the end of life eter- 
nal. Whatever holds of that, whatever co-operates or 
sympathizes with it, whatever ranges in the same line 
with it, is immortality of that supreme type of which the 
apostle says, that "in Christ all shall be made alive," 
and which justifies the contrast, amounting to antagon- 
ism, which the apostle sets between the destination of 
man in Adam, and the destination of man in Christ. 
Even in Adam all is not mortal. The soul of man, 
independently of those spiritual experiences and acqui- 
sitions which alone insure, which alone mediate eternal 
life in the gospel sense, possesses a kind of immortali- 
ty. That mysterious, indivisible entity, that insoluble 
something which we call "soul," must survive in some 
sort the dissolutions of death ; albeit, in some cases of 
extreme depravation or limitation, it may not be able to 
recover itself from the mortal shock, and to take up 
again the conscious life which it had in the flesh ; it may 
lack sufficient force to collect together a new system of 
particles, and to organize a new body, of which it shall 
reign the central, life-giving power. It may only sur- 
vive as one of the constituents of such a system, with 
no independent, conscious individuality; — subordinate, 
not chief, in the new economy to which it belongs. In 
most cases, however, one would fain believe that the 
soul is raised as soul, — as regent, conscious principle 
again. In the case of the strong men of history, the 
men of might, who have stamped their image on their 
time and filled the world with their deeds, it is impossi- 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IMMORTALITY. 379 



ble not to believe that the power which wrought with 
such mighty effect will continue to work in a new body, 
with new conditions. Yet even here, in so far as the 
power put forth was mere self-assertion, — the power of 
egoism, working for private and selfish aims, — it dies 
with the death of the bodv. All egoism dies : world- 
conquering, world-coveting ambition must not expect to 
push its adored self across the gulf, and resume its 
conquests on the other side. Xo self so sought is raised 
again. All efforts, wishes, and pursuits that terminate 
in self are self-limited, and end with the grave. Con- 
stantine the Great rebuked the covetous ambition of one 
of his courtiers, by drawing with his spear the man's 
figure on the ground. " TTithin that space," he said, 
?f is contained all you will carry with you when you go 
hence." 

Even in Adam all is not mortal ; and yet, as we sur- 
vey the world of which Adam is the type ; as we follow 
the changes of time, and cast our thought along the line 
of the quick succeeding generations that have occupied, 
each in its turn, the populous past, — there comes to us 
from that survey a savor of death. The sentiment im- 
pressed upon us by the contemplation of Adam's line is 
a sense of mortality. 

" He lived : he died. Behold the sum, 
The abstract, of the historian's page ! " 

The march of humanity across the fields of this planet 
is a funeral procession ; the planet itself is a moving 
cemetery : the ' ground we tread is saturated with the 
dust of our fathers. So true it is, that in Adam all 
die. 



380 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



But look again ; glance at the world as it is in 
Christ. I mean not the technically Christian world, 
but this human world, in so far as any portion of it has 
been illumined, enriched, regenerated, sainted, by that 
spirit of truth and love, which, while it dwelt without 
measure in Christ, has dwelt and wrought, in varying 
measures and degrees, in countless others before and 
since, — in how many prophets and heroes of the Old 
Covenant ! in how many martyrs and saints of the New ! 
in how many lights of the Gentile world, — the Sakyas 
and Zoroasters, the Socrates and Antonines of other 
faiths. When we so gaze, there is nothing that speaks 
of mortality ; nothing that breathes of dust and decay. 
The thought here is not of death, but of faith triumph- 
ant over death ; of the victories of the spirit, of ever- 
lasting; life. The mind recalls a venerable host whose 
names are written in heaven, — prophets, evangelists, 
patriots, apostles, benefactors of every kind, differing 
widely in power and grace, and the worth of their work, 
as one star differeth from another in glory ; but all 
agreeing in this one trait, that they labored, not "for the 
meat that perisheth, but for that which endureth unto 
everlasting life." They gave themselves up with un- 
wavering faith and uncalculating love to some worthy 
object in and for which they lived. Their creeds were 
many ; but the same mind which was in Christ was in 
them all. Thev wrought with differences of administra- 
tions, but in them wrought one and the self-same spirit, 
asserting itself in all diversities of operations as holy 
and divine. We cannot think of these as dead and 
dust. They are with us still by the witness of the spirit 
that was in them : vital forces in the realms of faith, — 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EMMORTAIiITY. 381 



the spirit's own, they lire unto God and they live unto 
us, witnessing and working with us and for us until 
now. So I interpret the saying, " In Christ shall all 
be made alive. " 

As we trace the presence and the working of that 
spirit in human history, we open an interminable gal- 
lery of the pious and brave, whose unselfish aims and 
devoted lives have raised them to the sainted seats of 
the world's undying reverence and love. Some by wis- 
dom and some by charity, some by patience and some 
by daring : but all, in the spirit of Christ, have been 
lights and saviours in their operation. Some have wan- 
dered through desert lands, and some have traversed 
the ocean waste ; some, who were born to wealth and 
rank, have renounced their heritage of earthly splendor, 
and spent their lives in poverty and obscurity, company- 
ing with rude and ignorant men, perhaps with savage 
children of the forest : some have perished for their 
country's rights : some have laid down their lives for the 
truth ; some have been eyes to the blind, and feet to the 
lame ; some have burst the bonds of error ; some have 
broken the fetters of the slave ; some have brought 
truth and newness to the understanding ; some have 
brought truth and newness to the heart : but all these, 
in their kind and degree, have been made alive with the 
life that never dies. 

This is the Christian idea of immortality, of the 
f " everlasting life." It is not a "natural," but a moral 
growth ; not universal, but special ; not a heritage, but 
an acquisition. It is something which appertains, not to 
the natural man, but to the spiritual. I do not question 
that it may be developed in another state, in cases where 



382 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



contrary influences have made its development impos- 
sible in this. I only deny that it is or Trill be developed 
in all cases as a matter of course, — developed by the 
accident of death. I deny that, without development 
and without an effort, it will be imparted to the grovel- 
ling soul ; that where it has not been attained, or even 
sought in this world, good angels wait to confer it in 
the next, or that God will hand it over as a birthday 
gift. We do not tumble into everlasting life when "our 
feet stumble on the dark mountains." Only the moral 
and spiritual in man is capable of conscious immor- 
tality. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom 
of God ; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." 
There are human creatures with whom it is impos- 
sible to connect the idea of immortality, — children 
of earth, whom it is impossible to conceive of as start- 
ing up at once from the bed of death into new and im- 
mortal life. On the other hand, when we see a man 
noble, generous, active in good, we can hardly imagine 
such a spirit and such an energy suddenly and for ever 
extinct, when the blood has ceased to circulate in the 
mortal frame in which and through which it wrought. 
The soul in its essence is indestructible ; but inde- 
structibleness is not immortality. The soul as an entity 
may and will survive ; but the soul as a conscious agent 
may, nevertheless, suffer death. 

Only the fulness of the spirit can " abolish death," 
as it did in that affluent dispensation of it in the early 
days of the Church. Brave souls may look upon it un- 
daunted ; philosophic minds may comfort themselves 
with the thought, that this is a fate which strong, brave 
men, and feeble men, and women, and little children, 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IMMORTALITY. 383 



have been through ; that we can bear what these have 
borne, sustained by the everlasting love co-present to all 
the exigencies of being. But only the spiritual eye, in- 
structed by faith, and conscious of immortality, can look 
through the gloom, and dissolve it in its own supernal 
light. "If a man keep my sayings," said Jesus, "he 
shall not see death." The spirit cannot see death, no 
more than the sun sees the shadows which it casts be- 
hind it. 

The Mussulmans have a fable about Moses, that, 
when the hour of his departure was come, God sent the 
angel of death, who appeared before him and demanded 
his soul. Moses greeted the angel with a friendly salu- 
tation, but questioned his right to touch a soul that 
had had communion with God. The death-ano;el was 
baffled by such assurance, and knew not how to pro- 
ceed ; for death and Moses, it seemed, had nothing in 
common. Then the Lord deputed the angel of Par- 
adise to convey to him an apple of Eden. And, as 
Moses inhaled the immortal fragrance, his spirit went 
forth from him, and was borne upon the odors of Eden 
into the presence of the Lord. 

This is the Mussulman's parable, and this is the in- 
terpretation of it. The assurance which disputes the 
power of death is the spirit's unconquerable faith in 
spirit ; and the apple of Eden is that full and un- 
troubled vision of immortality, whose strong attraction 
conquers death. 




I 

X. 



CRITIQUE OF PARTIALIST AND UNIVERSAL- 
IST VIEWS OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



X. 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



"Em jeder muss seine Holle noch im Himmel und seinen Himmel noch 
in der Holle fiuden." — Lessixg. 



It is a matter of comparatively little moment to a right- 
minded man how speculative theology may figure the 
awards of the life to come. No dogma relative to this 
subject can be more offensive than that whole system 
of views concerning the moral order of the universe, 
in which the ideas of punishment, and escape from pun- 
ishment, (partial or universal) play so prominent a part. 
The objection to this system is, that it turns the mind 
from that which is primary and vital, and fixes it on 
that which is secondary and subordinate, — turns it 
from the everlasting substance, and fixes it on the acci- 
dents ; that it puts happiness above goodness, and puts 
goodness as a means of happiness. 

The first and last and only question which this sys- 
tem propounds to the individual is, how to escape the 
eternal damnation to which it supposes him doomed 
by the fact of his humanity; i.e. by the measure of 

[387] 



388 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



sinfulness proper to human nature as such. The ques- 
tion is, not how to escape the sin, but how to escape 
the damnation incurred by it. The system makes the 
whole essence of revelation to consist w in the discovery 
to man of a new means by which, without any previous 
eradication of sin, sin can be pardoned." The aim of 
a true religion is, not to escape damnation, but to lay 
hold of everlasting life. These aims may seem to 
coincide in effect ; but the difference between them is 
heaven- wide. The one is dictated by selfish fear : the 
other springs from exceeding love. The former is 
ascetic in its tendency and method ; it delights in scru- 
pulous correctness of deportment, it accomplishes won- 
ders of self-denial, but all for self's sake, to escape 
damnation ; as the miser denies himself the gratifica- 
tions of sense for the sake of increasing his store. 
The other is a self-forgetting, a losing of one's self in 
some worthy object for its own sake. It is written, 
w He that will lose his life for my sake " (not for the 
sake of his own soul, but for my sake, for the sake of 
truth and righteousness and human weal) "shall find 
it." And who can doubt, that one who devotes him- 
self, a living sacrifice, to some great and good work, 
without troubling himself about the salvation of his 
soul, or spending a single thought on the subject, is 
in quite as salvable a condition as one whose single 
aim in life has been to save his soul from death? A 
very poor soul it may be when it is saved, and very 
little comfort he may have in it. However free from 
positive vice, however unspotted from the world, it 
may not have expanded, not developed ; it may never 
have fairly come out of itself in one true act of self- 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



389 



abandonment. A very little soul after all, and scarcely 
worth the pains it has cost. 

A true religion will rather aim to make us forget 
ourselves in the love and pursuit of noble ends, than 
seek to occupy us with thoughts of the hereafter, — 
our part and lot in another world. Let theologians 
say what they will, that is not the first and great con- 
cern, but a very secondary one. What we want of 
religion is to develop in us the principle of love. 
Without this no soul can be truly blessed, and this the 
fear of hell will never awaken. The uttermost that 
the fear of hell can do, is to keep the life unspotted 
from the world. It can never kindle the flame of love ; 
it can give no hold of eternal life. What we complain 
of in this system is, that, instead of taking us out of 
ourself, it drives us back upon ourself, in self-torment- 
ing introspection. Instead of showing us spiritual 
beauty in forms that shall win and command our af- 
fections, it turns a magnifying-glass on our sins and 
unworthiness. It aims to frighten us with our lost 
state. If it does not succeed in that, it leaves us 
weaker than before. If it does succeed, the remedy it 
proposes to our fear is, not eradication of the sinful 
principle, but a transfer of the penalty. It makes 
more of the penalty than it does of the sin. The sal- 
vation it offers is salvation from the consequences of 
sin, rather than from sin itself. 

The various opinions which have been entertained 
regarding the moral future of souls may be reduced to 
these two : 1st, That of the Universalists, who sup- 
pose that all souls, after a purgatory longer or shorter 
according to the exigency of each case, or even without 



390 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



purgatorial discipline, will be eternally blest ; 2d, That 
of the Partialists, who suppose that only a select por- 
tion will be so blest, and the rest consigned to eternal 
punishment, either in the way of annihilation or of 
conscious endless suffering. From the earliest period 
of the Church, these two parties have divided, very 
unequally, the Christian world. These two, and no 
third. Xo sect has maintained that all will be lost. 
An eschatology so desperate, however agreeable to the 
Church Despondent, involves too violent a theory of 
life for the hardihood even of penal theology. It 
seemed absolutely necessary that some should be saved, 
and that hell should have its correlative heaven, were 
it only for the sake of perspective. Simple theism 
required thus much. A God who creates only to de- 
stroy, or, creating to save, is balked in that intent by 
the wilfulness of his creatures or the power of Satan, 
and cannot so much as save one soul, would be equiva- 
lent to no God, and would answer no theological pur- 
pose. It was therefore conceded (not without seeming 
reluctance in some cases) by even the most zealous of 
those who identified the majesty of God with revenge 
for violated law, that a special effort of grace would 
be made by way of showing what Mercy could do if 
Justice would. 

Universalist and Partialist — both of these sys- 
tems, with proper modifications, that is, with a rea- 
sonable extension of the penal discipline on the one 
side, and a reasonable allowance of saving grace on the 
other, are plausible; but neither is demonstrable, nei- 
ther possesses the certainty requisite to constitute it a 
positive doctrine of religion, nor is it in the power of 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



391 



theological learning or human wit to establish any 
thing definite on this subject. Theology here must con- 
tent itself with generalities : religion must rest on those 
everlasting laws which compose the framework of the 
moral universe, and which include, together with this 
earthly life, the heavens and the hells in one dominion. 

If we suppose, with the UniversaJists, that all souls 
are predestined to everlasting blessedness in the world 
to come, we must suppose a fitness or capacity for 
such blessedness on the part of the subject, already 
existing or to be hereafter acquired. Without this 
fitness on the part of the subject, blessedness in any 
state is inconceivable. Xo man in his senses believes 
that happiness hereafter will be thrust upon him in 
spite of himself, and against all the habits and antece- 
dents of the soul. But to change that condition of the 
soul by an external force, in order to make it receptive 
of happiness, would be to annihilate one soul, and to 
create another in its place. If we say that this capacity 
already exists in the subject, — in all subjects, — we 
are contradicted by the plainest facts of nature and life. 
It may be urged, that the present unfitness arises from 
causes which cease with death ; that death will make 
all men blest by removing the obstacles to blessedness 
which abound in this world, and which belong to this 
world alone. This plea supposes an efficacy in death 
which we have no right to assume. It is thought bv 
some, that the body and the physical or other external 
influences by which we are conditioned in the present 
life are the cause of all evil ; and that every soul will 
be found fit for happiness when once divested of its 



392 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



mortal covering, and disencumbered of its present rela- 
tions. But are there no evils beside those which arise 
from physical and terrestrial relations ? Granting that 
a portion of our sins and our sufferings have their 
origin in the flesh, there are others which cannot with 
any propriety be traced to that source. Some organi- 
zations, no doubt , are more favorable to moral rectitude 
than others : but experience shows, that moral rectitude 
may exist under all conditions ; that the most favorable, 
so far as we can judge, do not secure it ; that the most 
unfavorable, so far as we can judge, do not preclude it. 
We have, therefore, no authority from any grounds in 
our present experience, and certainly not from any 
other source, for supposing that vice and misery belong 
to the body alone, and will cease with the ending of this 
bodily life. Moreover, in its extreme form, — the sup- 
position of immediate and universal happiness hereafter, 
— the Universalist theory impugns the disciplinary 
character, and confounds the meaning and a^o-ravates 
the mystery of this human world. If all men are 
morally fit for happiness now, it is difficult to under- 
stand why this world has not been so arranged as to 
yield that happiness now ; and why we are doomed 
to reach, by the long and circuitous route of mortal 
experience, and through the miracle of death, a good 
to which, in our present capacity, w r e might seem to 
have a present claim. 

Or, adopting the modification with which the Uni- 
versalist theory is commonly held, if we suppose that 
the fitness and capacity for happiness which exist not 
now will arrive hereafter, will arrive to all, — that all 
6ouls are destined to eternal blessedness after such 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



393 



probation as each may require, we still stretch the 
right of conjecture. We suppose a remedial and 
restorative influence in the air of hell, or (lest the theo- 
logical term should mislead) in the future transmun- 
dane penalties of sin, which may possibly belong to 
them, but of which we know nothing, and which seems 
to be assumed for the sake of the argument. Our 
observation does not detect this medicinal quality in 
the penal sufferings of the present life. There is virtue 
in sorrow to educate and perfect the good, but none 
that we can see to reclaim the wicked. It does not 
appear that punishment in this world has always the 
effect, or has in the majority of cases the effect, to 
reform the sinner ; contrariwise, it is notorious that 
men continue to sin and suffer to the day of their death. 
What authority have we for supposing that this process 
is arrested hereafter? or for not supposing that the 
sinner w T ill go on sinning and suffering everlastingly, 
or till evil becomes so predominant in the soul as 
utterly to quench its moral life, and conscious suffering 
ends in everlasting death? Who shall say, that sin, 
once established, may not grow to be supreme and 
ineradicable, — that the habit of transgression con- 
tracted in this world, and confirmed by every fresh 
transgression, may not become a necessity of nature 
strong as fate and deep as life? 

Thus, in either of its species, — that of immediate 
emancipation from sin and suffering by death, or that 
of final restoration to holiness and happiness by reme- 
dial suffering, — the Universalist theory concerning the 
future destination of the soul is pure conjecture, unde- 
monstrated, incapable of demonstration. 



394 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY . 



Moreover, although, in a matter like this, individual 
authority is of little account, we cannot conceal from 
ourselves that the weightiest names in the realm of 
speculation, both within and without the Christian 
Church, are found on the side of eternal retributions. 
Of each of these classes suffice it to name one. Of eth- 
nic sages our example shall be Plato, the supreme name 
in ancient philosophy. Plato, in the ? ' Gorgias," delivers 
himself, through the mouth of Socrates, to this effect : 
"It behooves that every one who suffers punishment, if 
justly punished by another, should either become bet- 
ter and be benefited, or should serve as an example to 
others, that others, seeing him suffer the things which 
he suffers, and being afraid, may reform. Now, there 
are some that are profited when punished, both by 
gods and by men : these are such as have sinned with 
curable sins.* Nevertheless, by torments and sorrows 
cometh their benefit, both here and in hell ; for it is not 
possible otherwise to be freed from wickedness. But 
others have been wicked in the extreme, and on account 
of such wickedness are become incurable. Of these 
examples are made : they themselves are no longer 
benefited, being incurable ; but others are benefited, 
seeing these suffer on account of their sin the greatest, 
the most afflictive and most terrible woes eternally ,f 
being regularly fixed as examples there in the prison of 
hell, as shows and warnings to the wicked perpetually 
arriving." 

Our modern and Christian example shall be Leibnitz, 
the optimist, — - an authority second to none in metaphy- 



* lacL(ia dfiapri/uara. 



f rbv del xpovov. 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



395 



sical profundity, or in logical acumen or conscienticfus 
love of truth. Optimism and eternal damnation are 
things hard to reconcile ; but Leibnitz, in the " Theodi- 
cee," after glancing at the Universalist theory, proceeds 
to say : — 

" Holding, then, to the established doctrine, that the num- 
ber of human beings who are damned eternally will be in- 
comparably greater than that of the saved, it behooves us to 
say, that the evil would still appear as almost nothing in 
comparison with the good, when we consider the veritable 
magnitude of the City of God. . . . The ancients had narrow 
ideas of the works of God ; and St. Augustine, through igno- 
rance of modern discoveries, was sorely put to it when the 
problem was to excuse the prevalence of evil. It appeared 
to the ancients that our earth was the only inhabited sphere : 
they were even afraid of the antipodes. The rest of the 
world, according to them, consisted in some luminous globes 
and crystalline spheres. At the present day, whatever limits 
may be assigned or denied to the universe, we cannot over- 
look the fact that there are innumerable globes as large and 
larger than ours, which have as much right as that to be the 
abode of rational beings, although it does not follow that 
those beings are men. ... It is possible that all the suns are 
inhabited only by happy beings ; and nothing obliges us to 
believe that there are many damned among them, since few 
examples or patterns will suffice for the use which the good 
may derive from the evil." # 

This reasoning, it must be confessed, is very weak, 
and altogether unworthy of such a mind. Its fallacies 
are too obvious to need any comment. Nor need we 



* TWodicde, Partie L 19. 



396 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



stop to inquire how far Leibnitz was hampered by the 
wish to avoid controversy on secondary points with 
the theologians of his day, or what mental qualifica- 
tions may have neutralized his exoteric admissions. I 
cite the passage only as showing that so resolute an 
optimist and so penetrating a thinker as Leibnitz be- 
lieved the principle of eternal punishment, in some 
sense, to be compatible with the goodness of God and 
a best possible world. And this belief is more un- 
equivocally expressed, as well as more ably vindicated, 
in another passage of the same work : — 

" There is. nevertheless, one species of justice, and a cer- 
tain sort of rewards and punishments, which seems less appli- 
cable to those, if any such there be, who act from absolute 
necessity. It is that species of justice whose object is neither 
amendment nor example, nor even reparation. The only 
foundation of this justice is the fitness which demands a 
certain satisfaction, by way of expiation, for an evil act. 
The Socinians, Hobbes, and others, do not admit this punitive 
justice which is properly vindictive. . . . Nevertheless, it is 
founded in a relation of fitness which contents, not only the 
offended party, but also the wise who behold it, as beautiful 
music or a fine piece of architecture contents well-constituted 
minds. . . . One may even say that it carries with it a certain 
indemnification to the mind, — that the disorder would offend 
if the punishment did not contribute to re-establish order.* 
.... Thus the pains of the damned continue then, even 
when they no longer serve to deter from evil." f 



* " Et on peut meme dire qu'il y a 5ci un certain dedommagement de 
T esprit, que le desordre offenseroit si le chatiment ni contribuoit a retablir 
l'ordre." 

t Theod., Partie II. 73, 74. 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



397 



Turning now to the opposite view, we shall find 
that Partialism has its own peculiar difficulties. TTe 
encounter here obstacles different in kind, but equal in 
their way to those which embarrass the view we have 
been discussing. 

If we suppose, with the Partialists, that only a se- 
lect portion of human souls will be finally blest, and 
the rest consigned to everlasting punishment, we are 
met on the threshold by a strong objection drawn from 
the idea of God, — a God all-merciful and all-wise, — 
and a universe formed and ruled by Infinite Wisdom and 
Mercy. This idea seems to require that adequate pro- 
vision shall be made in the constitution of things and 
the soul for every case of sin and suffering which the 
universe contains ; it seems to demand from the infinite 
resources of the Spirit a remedial force commensurate 
with every exigency of spiritual life, a power of nature 
or of grace by which the most corrupt may be reached 
and restored. It does not help the matter to say, that 
the sinner sins of his own free will, of his own free 
will persists in sin, and so dooms himself to endless 
perdition. That a being should have been created 
with this liability in his constitution, capable of so sin- 
ning and suffering eternally, — this is precisely the 
difficulty in the case. This it is which piety finds it 
so hard to adjust with the cherished idea of a Father 
of spirits and of mercies. In that word "Father/' it 
seems to see a refutation of Partialism. 

The old defenders of this theory associated with it 
a doctrine of predestination, importing, as they inter- 
preted that phrase, that the sinner sins by strong neces- 
sity, acting as his evil nature prompts, incapable of 



398 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



acting otherwise. Modern orthodoxy, anxious to re- 
lieve the idea of God of the odium of damning predes- 
tined sinners, shifts the responsibility of the act from 
the Creator to the creature, and, by substituting the 
notion of free-will for the dogma of Predestination, 
seeks to devolve on the damned the burden of his own 
destiny; while at the same time, retaining the partial 
Grace of the old system, it claims for God the undi- 
vided merit of salvation. But the shift is a failure, 
so far as the honor of God is concerned. The justice 
of eternal damnation is not vindicated by the theory of 
free-will. If human free-will is capable of abuse to 
such an extent as to be the occasion of endless misery, 
and if God foresees that abuse of it in any subject, then 
no theology can exonerate God from the consequences 
of that fatal endowment, and the responsibility of such 
a doom. The difference is merely nominal between a 
God who destroys by his own immediate act, and a God 
who puts into the hands of his creature an instrument 
by which he will certainly destroy himself. w It is as 
sure a method of killing" a man/' says Bayle, in his 
comments on this point, K to give him a rope with 
which one knows for a certainty that he will hang 
himself, as to stab him or to have him stabbed with a 
dagger. His death is willed as much by one who uses 
the former method, as by one who employs either of 
the others ; nay, " il seinble me me qu'on la veut 
avec un dessein plus malin puisqiron tend a lui laisser 
toute la peine et toute la fame de sa perte." 

Theology must not think to escape this dilemma by 
taking a high tone, and insisting on the power which 
the Creator has over the creature. "Hath not the 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 399 



potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make 
one vessel to honor and another to dishonor." * True, 
O Paul ! Nevertheless, the question is not of power, 
but of right. The Being who possesses this almighty 
power has created in me a sense of justice which de- 
mands justice of the Maker, — has established in me a 
judgment-seat by which his own acts are inevitably 
tried. The answer quashes the plea, instead of refuting 
it. It may silence the objector, but does not satisfy the 
objection. Unquestionably the potter possesses power 
over the clay. Unquestionably the Maker possesses 
the power to make one man wicked and miserable, 
and another righteous and happy. But Christianity 
has taught us to know God, not as absolute Power 
merely, but as Justice and Mercy. "Shall the thing 
formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast thou 
made me thus ? " The thin^ formed in this case is the 
human heart ; and that heart is so constituted by its 
Author that it craves to know, and must and will ask, 
concerning the purport and end of its being. And if 
to such questioning it receives this answer, M Thou 
wast formed to be wicked and eternally damned," shall 
not the thing made then say to Him that formed it, 
"Why hast thou made me thus? Why thus, O thou 
Infinite ! who hast all power to make and mould, even 
as the potter has power over the clay, — why hast thou 
made me, thy helpless vessel, to be the subject of such 
deep dishonor and boundless wrong?" It will so ask, 
and will not be content to receive for answer the 
absolute will of God as the sole and sufficient reason 



* Bom. is. 21. 



400 



EATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



for such ordination. Could it really believe in such 
ordination, on such grounds, the heart would feel that 
it had no God ; for, verily, absolute power does not 
make a God. And the heart would sink into itself 
with a grinding sense of infinite cruelty and almighty 
wrong, or re-act on oppression like the chained Prome- 
theus of the old Greek fable, — profound symbol of 
oppressed but unyielding manhood, — and scorn om- 
nipotence dissociated from justice. But the fact is, the 
heart can never truly believe in such an ordination and 
in such a God. The Divine has written his nature too 
deep in man to be extinguished by a dogma. It is 
possible to human piety to love God without demanding 
his favor in return ; * but true piety knows by its own 
deep sympathy with the Divine, that God is love, and 
that in that love there is no distinction of persons, — 
that all being is embraced in its boundless affection. 
No one felt this more profoundly than Paul. No one 
more ready to confess it, notwithstanding the words just 
cited. When, in this same Epistle to the Romans, he 
declares his belief that M all Israel shall be saved," 
together with the " fulness of the Gentiles," he discovers 
the real conviction of his heart. 

We may say, then, speaking as critics of the Par- 
tialist theory, that that theory militates with the infinite 
love which reason compels us to ascribe to God, and 
which seems to require that to every creature of God 
its existence shall be on the whole a blessing, — that 
no creature shall be called into being for whom in any 



* " Qui Deum amat, conari non potest, ut Deus ipsum contra amat." — 
Spinoza: Eth. V. 19. 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



401 



case it would be better that he had never been born. 
It matters not how widely we extend the circle of the 
blest, 'or how greatly we reduce the tale of the lost. 
The principle is the same, and no arithmetic can alter 
it. Suppose all saved but one, the difficulty still re- 
mains. Humanity demands that one; it mourns an 
imperfect heaven where that one is not, it hears a 
wail in the Alleluia whose choral symphony lacks that 
complemental voice. Indeed, the smaller the number 
of the damned, the heavier the damnation, and what 
is gained in one way by such concession is lost in 
another. What is gained numerically is lost qualita- 
tively. It may even be questioned if the old doctrine 
which made damnation normal, and salvation excep- 
tional, be not, on the whole, a more rational view than 
that which saves the mass and abandons the few. For, 
if the happiness of the world to come is purely a matter 
of grace, the free gift of God's love, entirely irrespec- 
tive of the merits of the subject, then the few who are 
excepted from that grace would seem to be more hardly 
dealt with, and to have more legitimate ground of 
complaint, than the multitude of the lost, where perdi- 
tion is the rule, and salvation a rare and exceptional 
favor. But if, on the other hand, the hereafter is 
determined by moral conditions, the few who shine 
with pre-eminent holiness are more broadly distinguished 
from ordinary deg'rees of moral excellence than the few 
superlatively wicked are from the general mass of un- 
worthiness. 

The insufficiency of those distinctions on which the 
rewards and punishments of the future state are pre- 
sumed to be based, is another of the difficulties which 

26 



402 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



embarrass the Partialis! theory. If we suppose, what 
that theory commonly assumes, that the state of the 
soul is unalterably fixed at death, — the wicked pre- 
cluded from all chance of reform, the good* secured 
from all danger of lapse, — : the disproportion between 
the moral distinctions of this world and the different 
fortunes of the next is too monstrous for reason to 
contemplate. The infinite difference between right and 
wrong must not be urged in defence of such a doctrine. 
The infinite difference between right and wrong is one 
thing : an infinite difference in the characters of those 
who. during the years of this mortal life, have done well 
or ill, is quite another thing. If we subtract from the 
character and life of the righteous all that may be 
termed good fortune, natural temperament, the native 
strength of the higher faculties, the comparative weak- 
ness of the baser appetites, education, social influences, 
opportunity, absence of strong temptation, — who can 
say that what remains of a purely moral nature is 
sufficient for eternal life, or even - a sufficient guaranty 
that the individual who has borne so fair a character in 
this world will preserve the same in another, — that he 
will not change from saint to sinner when placed in 
new circumstances and solicited by new relations? So, 
too, it is impossible to say with certainty how much of 
the crimes of this life may be due to external conditions : 
how far the circumstances of the sinner may have tended 
to suppress the good in his nature, and to bring out the 
bad ; and how far the good may be elicited and the bad 
counteracted by a different position hereafter. We are 
not warranted in ascribing all sin to circumstance ; yet 
much that we call sin, and that makes the apparent 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL. THEOLOGY. 



403 



difference between the moral and immoral classes of 
society, may have this origin, and the good and bad 
of this world may change places in the next. 

It avails not to say, in vindication of the dogma of 
eternal damnation, that God inflicts no positive pains 
on the sinner, but simply "withdraws," and leaves the 
wicked to their own devices. This withdrawing is 
precisely the thing which God cannot do, — one of the 
limitations of his omnipotence. Out of him no creature 
can exist; in him and by him all being subsists, the 
hells not less than the heavens. The mystic Yggdrasil 
is rooted in him as well as crowned by him. 

Verily, the strength of the Orthodox heaven does not 
consist in its exclusiveness, or the rule by which it 
excludes. The rough Norseman, on the eve of regen- 
eration, when the priest, to his inquiry, disclosed the dif- 
ferent future of Christian and heathen, withdrew his foot 
from the water, and declined the baptism which would 
separate him from the cherished heroes of his house and 
heart. Many, not wholly depraved, except in the theo- 
logical sense, will sympathize with the honest sea-king 
in this, less tempted by what the ecclesiastical salvation 
offers, than pained by what it excludes. Even from its 
heaven blows the east-wind of Orthodoxy. 

St. Augustine affirms of divine anger and forgive- 
ness, that God does not change, but his creatures. He 
is changed to them in their sufferings " as the sun to 
sore eyes is changed from mild to harsh, and from 
pleasant to oppressive, while he himself remains the 
same." * And, speaking of the blessedness and misery 



* " Illi potius quam ipse mutantur, et eum quodammoclo mutattim in his 
quse patiuntur inveniunt : sicut mutatur sol oculis sauciatis et asper quod^ 



404 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



of the future life, he identifies the one with a clear 
vision of the truth, — the other with ignorance and un- 
reality. There are two opposite kinds of affection, he 
says : " one by which the blest are ravished with the 
purest cognition of their Author ; the other by which 
the wicked are plunged into the deepest ignorance of 
truth. The latter will suffer real punishment by means 
of unreal images ; the good will enjoy real beatitude in 
the contemplation of realities."* 

In like manner, Maximus, the contemplative theolo- 
gian of the seventh century, makes the nature and 
punishment of the wicked to consist in want of reality. 
"They who wisely meditate the divine words," he says, 
"call by the name of Perdition, Hell, Sons of Perdi- 
tion, and the like, those who make to themselves, ac- 
cording to the affection of their mind, a reality of that 
which is not, and so come in all things to resemble 
phantasms." f But, above all, John Scotus, the intel- 



aramodo ex miti et ex delectabili molestus efficitur quum ipse apud seipsum 
maneat idem qui fait." 

* It must be confessed, that St. Augustine has maintained in his writings 
as grossly material views of the sufferings of the damned, and of the physi- 
cal constitution of the life to come, as have ever been propounded by the 
Christian Church. See, for example, the second, ninth, and tenth chapters 
of the De Civitate Dei, which treat of hell-fire. But, when he speaks of the 
joys of the blest, it is always the Beatific Vision that predominates in his 
conception. " Quapropter cum ex me quaeritur quid acturi sunt sancti in 
illo corpore spiritaii, non dico quod jam video, sed dico quod credo. . . . 
Dico itaque, Visuri sunt Deum in ipso corpore." — " Ibi vacabimus et viclebi- 
mus: videbimus et amabimus; amabimus et laudabimus." — De Civ. Dei, 
lib. xxii. cap. 29 and 30. 

f " Qui divina sapienter meditantur verba perditionem et infernum et 
filios perditionis et similia appellant eos qui quod non est, sibimet et secun- 
dum mentis affectum subsistentiam faciunt et sic phantasiis per omnia 
similes fiunt." — Quoted by Scotus Erig. in the De Divisionc Naturce, lib. v. 
c. 31. 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



405 



lectual wonder of the ninth century, who treats these 
matters more profoundly than any one else, has devel- 
oped in all its bearings the idea of the vision and par- 
ticipation of the Truth as the chief distinction between 
the good and the wicked hereafter. Both, he says, will 
have their intellectual images, as it were, the expressions 
of so many faces (pliant a sice veluti fades qucedam 
expresses). The just will see God in different ap- 
pearances, according to the altitude of contemplation 
attained by every saint. The wicked, on the other 
hand, will see different and false appearances of mortal 
things, according to the diverse motions of their evil 
thoughts. As the deified ascend through innumerable 
grades of divine contemplation, so those who depart 
from God descend ever through the different declensions 
of their vices into the deep of ignorance and into outer 
darkness. But the genera}, natural goods of human- 
ity , he maintains, will be common to all. "These 
are given from above, coming down from the Father 
of lights, generally diffused among all, from whose 
participation no one is excluded, of which no one is 
deprived, since no one can exist without them : no de- 
merits can impede the gift, no merits promote it : they 
anticipate all merit ; by the sole, abounding, divine 
plenitude of goodness, they flow to all, everywhere, in 
unexhausted effusion ; in none are they increased, in 
none diminished; the property of all alike, the good 
and the bad, they are withdrawn from none ; eternally 
and substantially they will endure in ail, free from all 
corruption and independent of all contrary passion.' 5 * 



* "Haec sunt data de sursum a Patre luininuni descendentia, in omnes, 
generaliter diffusa, quorum participatione nemo excluditur, nemo privatur, 



406 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



Hell-fire, he maintains, is not penal in itself, nor de- 
signed for penal purposes ; it is a part of the universal 
good, an element which the blest will inhabit as well as 
the wicked ; what is torment to the one will be health 
and joy to the other. 

I said the weight of authority is on the side of the 
Partialists. It must not be forgotten, however, that 
the other view has had its advocates in every period 
of the Christian Church, and among them has num- 
bered some of the best voices of the Church, from 
Paul to Schleiermacher. The opinion of Origen on 
this subject — his doctrine of an aTTOKaTaaraacg, or general 
Restoration* — is well known. It subjected him to 
persecution during his life, and to heavy condemnation 
after his death. Gregory of Nyssa, and Theodore of 
Mopsuestia, both eminent in the Trinitarian contro- 
versies of the fourth and fifth centuries, inclined to 
Universalism. St. Jerome, while insisting on the 
irrevocable and everlasting damnation of the heathen, 
expects a milder fate for Christian transgressors, j The 
Christian poet Prudentius, in the fourth century, proba- 



cum nemo sine his subsistit; nullius mali meritis impediimtur ne dentur, 
nullius bona merita pra?cedunt, quibus prsestentur; omne raeritum prse- 
oceupant; sola divina bonitatis largiflua plenitudine omnibus per omnia 
universaliter inexhausta effusione manant ; in nullo augentur, in uullo minu- 
untur ; agqualiter omnibus insunt, et bonis et malis ; a nullo retrahuntur, 
seternaliter in omnibus et substantialiter permanebunt, omni corruptione 
contrariaque passione absoluta." — De. Div, Nat. 

* It ought to be stated in this connection, that the Restoration of Origen 
was not a finality, but only one stage in a great revolution, to be followed 
by a new lapse. 

t " Sicut diaboli et omnium negatorum et impiorum qui dixerunt in 
corde suo, Non est Deus, credimus reterna tormenta, sic peccatorum et 
impiorum et tamen Christianorum, quorum opera in igne probanda sunt 
atque purganda, moderatam arbitramur et mixtam dementias sententiam." 



CRITIQUE OF FEXAL THEOLOGY. 



407 



bly expresses the prevailing sentiment of his time, 
when, in one of his hymns, he makes eternal damnation 
a rare exception to the universal Benignity, — 

" Idem tamen benignus 
Ultor retundit irain 
Paucosque nou piorum 
Patitur perire in aavum." 

The prevalence of Universalism in St. Augustine's 
day may be inferred from the fact, that several chapters 
of the "De Civitate Dei" are devoted to its refutation. 
After that, with the doubtful exception of John Scotus, 
above named, who rather hinted than confessed his 
heresy, * its traces are lost in the barbarism of the 
Middle Age. K Dismiss all hope " was written over 
the entrance of the mediaeval hell ; and, until the Eefor- 
mation, th'eology seems scarcely to have questioned the 
legend. And since the Reformation, the authorities, 
in number if not in quality, preponderate on the side 
of Partialism. If questions in theology could be settled 
.by the votes of theologians, the truth of Partialism 
would be established by an overwhelming majority. 
But, in such matters, one original thinker and indepen- 
dent critic outweighs a hundred traditionalists, — one 
fresh voice, a hundred echoes. 

Will any maintain that the Christian Scriptures have 
decided this question beyond dispute for all who receive 
them as final authority? That they have not done so 
appears from the fact, that opposite opinions concerning 



* " Divina siquidem bonitas consumet malitiam, sterna vita absorbct 
mortem, beautitudo miseriam, .... nisi forte adhuc ambigis dominum 
Jesum hunianas naturae acceptorem et salvatorem non totam ipsam sed 
quantulamcunque partem ejus accepisse et salvasse." 



408 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



it are entertained by different sects, each claiming to be 
Christian, each professing to receive the Xew Testa- 
ment as final and divine authority. The testimony of 
the sacred books on this subject is not uniform : the 
voices conflict. The doctrine of Paul in the Romans, 
as we have seen, is Universalism : other portions of 
the Scripture emphatically assert the opposite view. 
The language in these passages is strong, yet not so 
strong but that modern criticism, sharp and trenchant 
as a two-edged sword, will pierce between the words 
and the doctrine supposed to be contained in them. * 
Indeed, what language can be made so strong as to be 
impervious to the sword of criticism, when many tran- 
scribers, and many mediating witnesses, and many 
centuries, and a foreign language, intervene between 
the writer and the critic ? What language can be made 
so strong as to bind for ever thought and faith ? The 
purpose of revelation is not to settle speculative ques- 
tions depending on the nice interpretation of words, 
but to infuse a new spirit into human things, to illus- 
trate great principles of practical import with new 
sanctions. The principles are eternal; the dogmas in 
which they are embodied are limited and transient. 
The question is one of the antinomies of theology, 



* We attach little weight to the verbal criticisms on the word aicui'LOC. 
Granting what has often been alleged, that this word, in its -trier and origi- 
nal import, is not equivalent to our " everlasting." it is nevertheless probable 
that the New-Testament writers connected the idea of endlessness with it. 
But the plea, that whatever is deducted, in the interpretation of this word, 
rrom the duration of hell punishments, must also be deducted from the 
duration of future bliss. — a plea as old as Augustine. — is utterly futile i^as 
Pe Quincey has shown) as an argument for the eternity of the former. 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 409 



— a question of which affirmative and negative are 
equally debatable and equally doubtful. It is a ques- 
tion on which sentiment and reason are divided. Our 
heart is with the Universalists ; but reason is shocked 
by the violence of the hypotheses which Universalism — 
theological as well as philosophical — seems to neces- 
sitate. Theological Universalism supposes a too forci- 
ble interference of Almighty Love in the normal pro- 
cesses of the individual soul, bringing the Divine into 
self- collision. Philosophic Universalism assumes an 
inevitable triumph of self-recovery, — a fatality of 
goodness in man which seems to be based on no analy- 
sis of human nature, which certainly is not warranted 
by any mundane experience, and whose only voucher, 
so far as we can see, is a brave hope, which, however 
honorable to those who cherish it, is of no great use in 
the critical investigation of this subject. Theodore 
Parker, one of the ablest representatives of philosophic 
Universalism in this country, states the doctrine with 
% his usual vigor: "But there is no spiritual death, — 
only partial numbness, never a stop to that higher life. 
The soul's power of recovery from wickedness is infi- 
nite ; its time of healing is time without bounds. 
There is no limit to the vis meclicatrix of the inner, 
the immortal man. To the body, death is a finality ; 
but the worst complication of personal wickedness is 
only one incident in the development of a man whose 
life is continuous, an infinite series of incidents all 
planned and watched over by Absolute Love. ... In 
all the family of God there is never a son of perdition.'"' 
This is fine, had the author but legitimated it by some 
demonstration of the grounds of his prophecy beside 



410 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



general reference to the revelation of the " Universe," 
from which he professes to have derived it. "I think 
there is not in the Old Testament, or the New, a sin- 
gle word which tells this blessed truth, that penitence 
hereafter shall do any good. . . . But the Universe is 
the revelation of God, and it tells you a grander truth, 
— infinite Power and infinite Love, time without 
bounds for the restoration of the fallen and the recov- 
ery of the wicked." 

I am far from questioning the fact of conversions and 
reformations in the world to come. On the contrary, I 
believe that to countless profligates who perish in their 
sins, opportunities and appeals and gracious influences, 
denied in this world, will be vouchsafed hereafter, and 
will tell with saving effect ; and that many who were 
last, will be first. But does it follow that all will be 
converted ? that saving influences will act with compul- 
sory force? that the soul, as such, is fatally bound and 
predetermined to goodness? that every Borgia is a 
Carlo Borromeo in eclipse, and every Brinvilliers an 
undeveloped Elizabeth Fry ? Has this pleasant fancy 
any foundation but its own pleasantness, any authority 
but an undefined conception of the possibilities of Di- 
vine government? It is not a natural consequence, not 
a development according to cause and effect, but a 
monstrous accident, a wild interposition of juggling 
miracle which we expect when we so dream. The most 
distinguished of American philanthropists, with large 
experience of human nature and reformatory discipline, 
expressed to me his conviction that some natures are 
beyond the reach of moral influence, — proof against 
all discipline, — moral incurables. What reason to ex- 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



411 



pect a moral revolution in such characters hereafter? 
If any derived from the nature of the human soul, let 
psychology declare it. The divine mercy? It is easy 
to talk of divine mercy; but the question is here of 
divine power. The question is of possibility ; it is 
whether Omnipotence itself can reform such characters 
without so violating their idiosyncrasy, without so tra- 
versing their normal developments, as in. effect to de- 
stroy their identity ; and whether it would not better 
comport with divine economy to substitute at once 
another soul. A conversion which, instead of develop- 
ing a native good, should impose a foreign one, would 
not be a reformation, but a metahtizosis, a transub- 
stantiation. But we are supposing a case, in which 
there is no good to be developed, if not a case of entire 
depravity, — the existence of such cases may be denied, 
— yet a case in which the will is irrecoverably divorced 
from good, and bent on evil. Schiller describes the hero 
of the " Robbers " by saying, that he would not pray, 
if once so resolved, though God should appeal to him in 
person with the offer of immediate heavenly bliss. I 
fancy this conceit expresses a possibility of human na- 
ture, that the soul may arrive at a point of antagonism 
where the pride of self-hood shall resist all appeals, and 
a self-centred wilfulness shall say, " Evil, be thou my 
good." When that point is reached, we can see no 
remedy, no way of restoration, that would not compro- 
mise the soul's integrity. Yet even these cases are 
scarcely more hopeless than those of weak and unstable 
souls, swift to repent, and equally swift to transgress 
anew, whose existence oscillates between contrition and 
indulgence. The moral influences wilich recoil from 



412 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



the solid resistance of the former character, glide infruc- 
tuous from the smooth facility of these. 

If, therefore, we allow that Universalism is a natural 
and legitimate inference from the moral nature of Deity, 
we must qualify that inference, admitting here, as in 
every general principle, possible exceptions. Univer- 
salism is true in the general principle, that future bless- 
edness is the normal destination of man. God will 
have all men to be saved, in the sense in which he wills 
that all fruit-germs shall become fruits, and all human 
embryos, well-formed, healthy men and women. But 
this destination is not always accomplished : * resist- 
ance or defect in the stuff, collision of forces, or what 
not, produces abortions in the one case : and defect or 
contradiction of the will may produce them in the other. 
The world of souls may have its failures, as well as the 
world of forms. 

Supposing, then, that some individualities shall prove 
intractable and insalvable, what, in the final event, is to 
be the destiny of these abortive and exceptional souls ? 
The idea of a state of endless, positive, unmitigated, 
conscious suffering, such as the old theology prescribed 
for them, we, in this age, have no hesitation in repudi- 
ating, as utterly inconsistent with all just views of di- 
vine government and the nature of the soul. However 
imposing the authorities in favor of a doctrine which 
numbers a Plato and an Augustine among its advocates, 
we cannot so affront the more imminent authority in 



* "It is true," said old Meletins of Mopsuesia, "that God will have all 
men to be saved; but it is evident that the human will does not always co- 
incide with the Divine." 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



413 



our own breast as to symbolize with them in this partic- 
ular, Though a vast majority of the Christian Church 
affirm it, we pronounce the doctrine unchristian, con- 
trary to the spirit of Christ, however it may seem to 
accord with the letter of the gospel. Orthodoxy may 
steel itself to approve an immortality of woe, and even, 
as in the case of Tertullian and of Edwards,* imagine 
a satisfaction in the contemplation of it ; but mature 
reason and the unperverted heart alike and instinctively 
reject it. Moreover, I hold such a state to be psycho- 
logically impossible. Satisfaction, in the way of frui- 
tion or of hope, is the pabulum vitce without which 
no soul can permanently subsist : the result of continued 
suffering must either be an accustomedness which will 
make it tolerable, or an intolerableness which will over- 
power and extinguish consciousness, ?? Xo soul," says 
Lessing, "is capable of a pure sensation ; that is, of one 
which even in its smallest moment is only pleasant or 
painful, much less of a state in which all the sensations 
are thus unmixed, whether of the former or the latter 
kind." f More elaborately, Schleiermacher, in his trea- 



* See a Sermon of Jonathan Edwards entitled " The End of the Wicked 
Contemplated by the Righteous, or the Torments of the Wicked in Hell no 
Occasion of Grief to the Saints in Heaven." — " The miseries of the damned 
in hell," says Edwards, "will be inconceivably great. . . . The saints in 
glory will see this, and will be far more sensible of it than we can possibly 
be. They will be more sensible how dreadful the wrath of God, and will 
better understand how terrible the sufferings of the damned are : yet this 
will occasion no grief to them. They will not be sorry for the damned ; 
it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them : but, on the contrary, 
when they have this sight, it will excite them to joyful praises." — The 
Works of President Edwards (Worcester edition), vol. iv. p. 290. 

f Theologische Aufsatze. 



414 



RATIONAL CHRISTIAJSITY. 



tise on Christian Faith,* has shown the irreconcilable- 
ness of a state of perpetual torment as well with the 
constitution of the human soul as with the supposition 
of an opposite state, appointed for the good, of perfect 
and everlasting blessedness. If the torment, he says, 
be supposed to consist in physical pains, the conscious 
power of enduring such pains is itself a mitigation of 
the suffering. If remorse be the punishment, con- 
science must be active in the sufferer, and that activity 
of conscience supposes a change for good, and is in its 
nature remedial; — if consciousness of forfeited joys, 
the ability to figure those joys implies the capacity of 
like enjoyment, and that capacity a partial reformation. 
On the other hand, if such a state be considered in rela- 
tion to the opposite state of the blest, it is vain, he 
argues, to deny to the blest a sympathy with souls in 
torment which must effectually disturb their felicity ; it 
is vain to contend that eternal pains, if decreed, must 
be just, and that the contemplation of God which con- 
stitutes the blessedness of heaven must include the 
contemplation of his justice ; that contemplation does 
not exclude and cannot neutralize sympathy with suffer- 
ing ; and we even demand of the righteous w a deeper 
compassion for merited pains than for unmerited" 
In discussing these matters, one principle is of last 
importance ; namely, that the future, whatever its char- 
acter, will be a necessary consequence of the present^ 
the natural result of causes now at work, the fruit of 
a good or evil life. Much of the error which prevails 



* Der Christliche Glaube nach den Grundsatzen der Evangelischen 
Kirche (ed. 1836), vol. ii. p. 163. 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 415 



in relation to the future state must be ascribed to a 
disregard of this principle. The essential truth involved 
in the figurative language of Scripture has been con- 
founded with the pictures which envelope it. Hence, 
in the doctrine of the Church, the natural results of 
character have been converted into rewards and punish- 
ments, these into states of rewards and punishments ; 
and these states have been conceived as entirely distinct 
from each other, each perfect in its kind and eternal in 
duration. Such, to this day, are the popular heaven 
and hell of the Christian world. The consequences of 
men's actions are eternal. Let us keep this principle in 
view, and we shall see that the future state of the 
wicked can hardly be one of pure suffering. For who 
so depraved that no good has ever mingled with his 
earthly life? This good, however scanty, is not lost: 
it must bring forth fruit according to its kind, and yield 
its consolation in eternity. If any shall object, that, 
according to this principle, the good must have their 
sorrows in the world to come, and that "Heaven" is 
not the unmixed rapture represented by the popular 
faith, I have no wish to avoid this obvious conclusion. 
On the contrary, I frankly confess that the popular rep- 
resentation seems to me to err as widely on the one side 
as on the other ; the idea of a heaven into which no 
sorrow can enter, — a broad, unchastened day, — 

" Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender/' 

seems to me just as absurd as that of a hell whose Sty- 
gian hold no joy can penetrate, and no hope relieve. 
The heavens and the hells interpenetrate each other; 
and the souls of men, with few exceptions, hereafter as 



416 



RATIONAL CHEISTIAXITr. 



here, for a time at least, will inhabit both or harbor both. 
The difference between the wicked and the righteous 
consists, not so much in the funded good or evil of their 
respective natures, as in the tendencies- — good or evil 
— established in their wills. These tendencies, once 
established, will draw their subjects contrary ways, with 
progressive divergence sundering souls, the good from 
the bad ; attracting the former to the Infinite Good, and 
impelling the latter — shall we say to the Infinite Evil? 
There is no infinite evil. 

What, then, is the final destination of incorrigible 
and exceptional souls? Not endless torment, but ever- 
lasting (spiritual) death, utter extinction of the moral 
life. All the analogies point to this conclusion, all true 
deductions from the moral nature confirm it : and, for 
those who demand the warrant of the letter, what con- 
clusion more just to the letter of the Scripture which 
declares that '"sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth 
death " ? Conscience (or self-consciousness) is the life- 
principle of moral natures. The tendency of sin is to 
weaken and corrupt, and finally to mortify and destroy, 
that principle. TThen, accordingly, in any soul the evil 
tendency exceeds a certain stage of development, the 
soul loses the power of self-recovery, and — the evil 
tendency still proceeding — arrives at last to rest in 
evil as its good, and to sin without compunction, or 
any inward restraint or contradiction.* Then — the 
evil tendency still proceeding — commences a process of 
mortification, which involves, as its final consummation, 
loss of consciousness ; for consciousness supposes a ca- 



* This is the stage of Devildom, or "Evil Spirits." 



CRITIQUE OF PENAL THEOLOGY. 



417 



parity of distinguishing good and evil, and loss of vol- 
untary power, for voluntary power involves also a moral 
element. Sin is then finished, and has brought forth 
death. The soul, as a moral agent and a conscious 
individuality, is extinct : as a monad it still survives. 
Xo longer a person, but a thing, its condition thence- 
forth is not a question of psychology, but of ontology,* 
The view here offered is by no means new, but has 
never obtained extensive currency in the Christian 
Church. Yet it is the one which seems to me most de- 
fensible, as being less violent in its hypothetical assump- 
tions than Universalism, and more in harmony with just 
conceptions of Deity and divine rule than other forms 
of Partialism. The only point we may regard as es- 
tablished in this matter is the immortality of the moral 
nature, and a moral connection between the life that 
now is and the life to come. All else is mere specula- 
tion ; and so little is gained by speculating on a future 
state, that the wise, after sounding in vain, to the extent 
of their line, this uncertain deep, will bound their in- 
quiries by such practical conclusions as are best adapted 
to our moral wants. Xo reform in theology is more 
needed at present, than one which shall teach us how 
to prize, and how best to possess, this mortal world. 
TTe make too much of death and hereafter. TTe seem 
to be wandering at the foot of a mountain, behind 
which lies the land of our dreams. And the mountain 



* To those who are curious in such speculations, the Gnostic cosmogony 
of early Christendom, which was afterwards unconsciously revived by Jacob 
Bohme, — the cosmogony which supposes the material universe to be the 
wreck of a foregone spiritual creation, — may suggest the possible uses of 
lost souls. 

27 



418 



RATIONAL CHRISTIAXITY. 



casts its long, dark shadow across our earth-life, ob- 
scuring its import and veiling its glories. The moun- 
tain exists only in our conceit : the land of our hopes 
and our fears is in the soul. We cany within us 
the "Judgment" to come, and the Judge, and all the 
hereafter, To be in eternity is not to be personally 
translated, but spiritually transformed : it is not to be 
disembodied, but disenchanted, unselfed. To rill the 
moment worthily is everlasting life. 



XL 

THE TWO TYPES. 



XI. 



THE TWO TYPES. 



When the gospel was first delivered to the world, it 
had to encounter two contrary tendencies, represented 
by two different classes of minds. It encountered re- 
ligious prejudice on one side, and philosophic pretension 
on the other. The former of these tendencies was rep- 
resented by the Jews ; the latter, by the Greeks. No 
two minds could be more unlike than the minds of 
these two nations, — the one perversely straitened, big- 
oted, intolerant, but firm ; the other liberal, expansive, 
but curious, fickle, doubting. The one demanded exter- 
nal authority ; the other demanded philosophic justice. 
The one required that a doctrine or system should be 
authenticated by some visible token ; the other required 
that it should be scientifically legitimated. With the 
one, the question as to every doctrine was, "Hath 
the Lord spoken ? hath the Lord said it ? " And the 
evidence that the Lord had said it must not be internal, 
but external. It was not the nature of the doctrine 
itself, but some prodigy or supernatural circumstance 
attending its first annunciation. With the other, the 
question was, "Is it philosophical? Is it logical? Is 

[421] 



422 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



it capable of demonstration? Does it harmonize with 
this or that school? 

The Jews were a nation taught by prophets, -who 
claimed a divine commission for what they uttered. 
They delivered their doctrine with an introductory, 
" Thus saith the Lord." The Greeks were taught by 
sophists and philosophers, who claimed no authority 
but that of reason for their opinions. They questioned 
nature, questioned the soul, analyzed their impressions, 
and gave forth the results of their inquiries in the form 
of scientific propositions, subject to criticism, to be re- 
ceived or rejected as criticism should confirm or refute 
them : not as the burdens of the Lord, to be received, 
without question, in the Lord's name. Their wisdom 
was reflective, not intuitive : it was elaborated, not in- 
spired. They surveyed, according to their light, the 
entire field of human inquiry ; they investigated all 
the questions which have ever agitated the human 
mind. All the tendencies of modern thought were 
anticipated, all the schools of modern philosophy are 
represented, in their speculations. When these specu- 
lations were brought to bear upon Christianity, they 
encountered a new and opposing element. Christianity 
would not accommodate itself to the wisdom of the 
schools. The schools could not adjust themselves with 
Christianity. To Greek philosophy Christianity seemed 
e * foolishness." As little could the Jews, on the other 
hand, reconcile Christ with their traditions. They could 
not, or would not, see their Messiah in the Crucified. 
To Jewish prejudice, a gospel sealed with the cross 
was a K stumbling-block." But the gospel, ordained to 
be a new wisdom and a new power in the world, pur- 



THE TWO TYPES. 



423 



sued its way, regardless of Jewish traditions and of 
Greek philosophy. "To the Jews a stumbling-block, 
to the Greeks foolishness," it proved itself to those who 
received it, "the wisdom of God and the power of God 
unto salvation." 

The Jew and the Greek, as Paul found them, have 
passed away from the stage of this world ; but these 
two tendencies remain. There are still these two 
classes of minds, — the Jew and the Greek ; and, corre- 
sponding with them, two different forms of religious 
thought and life, - — a Jewish and a Greek Christianity. 
Neither of these is complete in itself ; neither expresses 
the whole truth of the gospel ; each serves as a check 
on the other ; each is the other's complement. True 
Christianity is the reconciliation of the two. Let justice 
be done to both ! 

L The prevailing type in theology is Judaism. In 
the Christian Church, as everywhere else, the major- 
ity depend on external authority for their opinions, 
especially their religious opinions. In settling for 
themselves the question what is true, they look out- 
ward, and not inward. The doctrine which shall 
gain their assent must have some other basis than rea- 
son, or than their understanding. Is it the doctrine 
of the Bible ? Is it the doctrine of our sect ? Has the 
Conference or the Council endorsed it ? Does this or 
that preacher accept it? If you inquire the grounds 
of then- belief in Christianity, they refer you to the 
signs which accompanied its first promulgation. The 
miracles of the New Testament are more to them than 
the evidence of the spirit in the doctrine and life of 



424 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



Jesus. They appeal to the Scriptures. If you de- 
mand of them, "How do you know that the Scriptures 
are true?" the answer is, "Because they are inspired." 
w And how do you know them to be inspired ? " 
" The Church says so." The " says so " of the Church 
carries greater conviction to their minds than the evi- 
dence of the spirit in the word itself. If you could 
convince them that the miracles of the New Testament 
are not true, Christianity, in their estimation, would 
lose all its authority. The doctrines might still be 
true, but they would cease to have any special value. 
If you could convince them that the Scriptures are 
not inspired, in that technical and half-material sense 
which they connect with the term ; that, though full of 
a divine spirit, they are not exceptional compositions, — 
convince them of this, and the Scriptures would seem 
to them to be deprived of all their significance. In 
short, truth to them is not a relation between their own 
minds and a given proposition or aspect of a subject, 
but a relation between them and some authorized per- 
son or persons, or institutions. It is not an act of 
perception, but an act of homage ; not an individual 
experience, but a foreign dictum. They are constitu- 
tionally averse to new opinions, or such as have the 
aspect of novelty. And, when they assail such opin- 
ions, it is not by reason, but by authority. They call 
for a sign, and triumphantly appeal to their own. " To 
the law and the testimonies " is their cry. And what 
they cannot find in the law and the testimonies, accord- * 
ing to their interpretation, or the interpretation of their 
sect, they not only reject, but reject with scorn. The 
asserter of such opinion is not only an errorist, but anti- 



THE TWO TYPE So 



425 



christ. It is not enough to disallow his doctrine : they 
rise against it. Not content with ignoring it for their 
own particular, they denounce it as an offence ; and, 
where the times will permit, they punish it as a 
crime. 

These are the Jews in religion; in modern phrase, 
the " Orthodox."' They are the conservative force in the 
Church, the safeguard and bulwark of Christian doc- 
trine ; without which it would run wild, and lose itself 
in endless perversions. If not philosophic and rational, 
they are politic and practical. If not progressive, they 
are all the more steadfast. They are "constitutional." 
I intend by that phrase, so familiar in political life, 
the same quality or the same attitude in religious mat- 
ters which is commonly expressed by it in relation to 
civil. We say that a statesman, or public officer, or 
public act, are "constitutional," when they conform to 
the written instrument on which the State is founded, 
and by which it is agreed that the legislation of the 
State and the administration of its affairs shall be ruled. 
The constitution is not infallible : it may be faulty in 
some of its provisions, it may need revision and amend- 
ment ; but, so long as it is the constitution of the State, 
it is very evident that wisdom and the public good re- 
quire its observance. It is easy to see what mischief 
must ensue, what disorganization and dissolution of all 
bonds and proprieties, what confusion, what hazard to 
life and goods, if the people of the State, and especially 
those in authority and public trust, should wholly dis- 
regard its provisions, and conduct themselves as if no 
such instrument existed, as if nothing were settled, but 
every thing left to the private discretion of each indi- 



426 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



vidual. It is obvious that the State could not stand 
on such a basis as that. There must be some kind of 
constitution, written or understood, to secure the well- 
being, to secure the existence, of society. And there 
must be constitutional men to maintain and execute its 
provisions. 

The Christian Church is a spiritual society, asso- 
ciated for spiritual ends on the same terms, as regards 
the point we are now considering, on which the State 
associates for civil and temporal ends ; that is, on the 
terms of a mutual understanding as to aim and action. 
And, since the greater part of the business of the 
Church is the communication and inculcation of reli- 
gious truth, it follows that there must be a mutual 
understanding on that point, — on the question, What 
is truth, or what is the truth which the Church has to 
teach? That understanding, expressed or implied, is 
the constitution of the Church. And when I say the 
Church, I mean each particular branch of the Church, 
by whatsoever name it may be called. Each branch of 
the Church has its constitution, which serves as the basis 
*of its action, and the maintenance of which is essen- 
tial, not only to its prosperity, but to its very being. 
Suppose that no such understanding existed ; that the 
doctrine of the Church, of any Church, were wholly 
undetermined ; that not so much as a fundamental pro- 
position, or general outline of Christian faith, were 
admitted or understood ; that every proposition which 
miglit offer, from whatsoever quarter, of whatsoever 
import, were equally entitled to call itself Christian, 
and to be received as the doctrine of the Church ; that, 
instead of a constitution, the Church presented a blank 



THE TWO TYPES. 



427 



tablet, on which each might inscribe his own theory and 
call it Christianity, — suppose this, and what follows? 
It is easy to see, that Christianity, as a form of faith, 
would soon become extinct, overlaid with the specula- 
tions of all who incline to speculate, with the visions of 
all who are given to dream. The Christian Church, 
instead of the " Bride of the Lord," would become the 
harlot of every reformer who might wish to dally with 
her ; the temple, instead of a fane for Christian wor- 
ship, would become a pantheon for all the divinities of 
all religions, or a pandemonium for every abortion 
of the human mind. Thanks, therefore, to the Jewish 
party, the Orthodox, the conservative party in religion ! 
They are the body-guard of the Church ; they stand by 
the record ; they guard the ark of religious truth from 
the wildness of fanaticism on the one hand, from insidi- 
ous speculation on the other. Let them have their 
dues. If unfriendly to inquiry, and indifferent to ab- 
solute truth, they are fervently attached to what they 
suppose to be " the faith once delivered to the saints." 
If limited in their views, and bigoted in action, they 
are serious and devout. If wanting in liberality, 
they excel in zeal. 

At the same time, we must not, in justice to Christian 
truth, conceal from ourselves the radical vice of the 
Jewish type. Having no interest in truth as such, but 
interested only in the forms that embody it, and in them 
only as something given, as fixed facts and institutions, 
minds of this class refuse to perceive that no existing 
forms or institutions contain the whole truth ; that truth 
cannot be thus confined; that the forms of one age 
become inadequate to the wants of the next, — the 



428 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



human mind, with its capacity for truth, for ever grow- 
ing, while forms and institutions remain stationary. 
The J ews in religion are unfriendly to progress ; they 
oppose themselves to progress ; and, had it depended 
on them alone, religion would have made no progress 
in the world, and humanity none. The same zeal 
which levels its ban at every new word in the Christian 
Church would ban Christianity itself, if Christianity 
were a new dispensation just offering itself to the 
human mind. One cannot help feeling, that the Jews 
who require a sign at the present day, and admit 
nothing without authority, are the genuine descendants 
of the Jews who required a sign in the days of the 
apostles, and would not see it when it was given. One 
cannot help feeling, that these Orthodox, who contend so 
zealously for the old way, had they been contemporaries 
of Jesus would not have been among the number of his 
disciples. It was the Orthodox party in the old Jeru- 
salem Church that demanded the crucifixion of Christ. 
It was the Orthodox party in the early Christian Church 
that resisted the propagation of Christianity among 
the Gentiles, except they first became Jews, and would 
have kept it, if possible, a national privilege, confined 
to the children of Abraham. It was the Orthodox 
party which all along, from the final establishment of 
Christianity in the fourth century until now, has uni- 
formly resisted every attempt to reform the doctrine or 
the polity of the Church. It was the Orthodox party 
which clamored for Mary-worship and the worship of 
images, and raged against all who sought to abate or to 
banish these corruptions. It was they who sent hell 
among the Vaudois, and presided at the Council of 



THE TWO TYPES. 



429 



Constance: who choked Savonarola, and would have 
choked Luther : who unsepulchred the bones of Wick- 
liffe, and kindled the fires of Smithfield. and instituted 
the blood-bath of Huguenot France. It was the Jew- 
ish party in the English Church which enacted the Act 
of Conformity : which wielded the Star Chamber and 
the Court of High Commissions against the Puritans. 
It was the Jewish party in Puritan New England that 
hanged and scourged the Quakers, and re-enacted in 
the Xew World, the ruthless* rigors of the Old. 

In fine, the Jews in religion are no friends to truth 
as such. Though fanatically jealous of what they call 
truth, they value it not for its own sake, but only for 
authority's sake and tradition's sake. They value it, 
not as wisdom, but as a sign : not as the bread of life 
to be nourished by. but as show-bread to swear by. 
They value it, not as something to use, but as some- 
thing to hold. If the formulas which they guard so 
jealously, express the truth, it is accidental, so far as 
they are concerned. Any other formulas which should 
happen to have been delivered to them would answer 
the purpose just as well. They might as well have 
falsehood as truth in their creed, as to any life which 
they draw from it. It is not truth that they want, 
but authority. 

2. If, now, we turn to the Greek type in religion, we 
shall find it to be the exact reverse of the foregoing in 
all its essential features. "The Greeks seek after wis- 
dom : n that is, philosophy, knowledge, understanding. 
Conviction, with them, is not based on authority, but 
on insight. They make little of authority, and little 
of tradition ; they want, not only to believe, but to com- 



430 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



prehend. It is not enough that a doctrine is delivered 
to them by the Church. They cannot receive it on that 
ground, unless it shall approve itself to their investiga- 
tion. They subject it to critical analysis ; and what 
analysis confirms, that only they receive. The first 
question with them is, not what has been delivered, 
but what is true : not what the Church teaches, but 
what Reason affirms. They are not careful to abide 
by the Past ; they do not believe that all truth is em- 
bodied there. They believe in progress ; they believe 
that truth is progressive, that more light is to break 
forth, and new discoveries to be made. They seek 
truth in all directions, and welcome it, or the promise 
and semblance of it. from whatsoever quarter, whether 
it be the School or the Church. They love to supple- 
ment the word of revealed truth with the teachings of 
secular philosophy, and to reconcile and blend them 
both in a more comprehensive view than the current 
theology, in their judgment, supplies. 

This is the Greek element in religion, — liberal, in- 
quiring, receptive, progressive, apt to learn, eager to 
comprehend. A very important agent it has been in the 
Christian Church. Whatsoever of progress, of free- 
dom, of light, of enlarged and comprehensive vision, 
the Church has attained, has come to it through this 
medium. Without it, the Church would never have 
emancipated itself from Judaism, from Romanism, from 
any other form of doctrine or discipline which has once 
been impressed upon it. Each successive development 
of Christian doctrine is directly or indirectly the pro- 
duct of this element. Personally, it is an indispensable 
condition of a living and productive faith. Without it, 



THE TWO TYPES. 



431 



faith is a blind instinct, on which no reliance can be 
placed ; which stimulates without directing ; which 
makes fanatics, but never discreet and effective servants 
of the truth. We may believe without understanding, 
as we may also understand without believing ; but the 
highest form of religious life is that in which reason is 
guide to faith, and in which believing is an act of the 
intellect as well as the heart. 

But while we honor the Greek in religion, with his 
search after wisdom, and while we rejoice that this type 
has never been extinct in the Church, we must not 
overlook its essential defects, nor blink its perversions. 
We must bear in mind, that the very trait which consti- 
tutes its merit and its glory is peculiarly liable to abuse, 
and, when abused, is more mischievous than bigotry 
itself. There are two sides to the love of knowledge. 
It may be a dutiful desire for the truth, as spiritual 
nourishment, as means of growth, as something divine 
to be realized in life ; and it may be mere curiosity, 
a thirst for mental excitement amusing itself with 
mental images, as a child turns over the leaves of its 
picture-book, or pulls its playthings to pieces, with a 
scrutiny in which there is more of the love of marvel 
than of wise research. There is a seeking after knowl- 
edge which looks upwards, and aspires to the light, — 
aspires to it as divine manifestation and divine guidance ; 
and which, with earnest speculation in its eye, still 
acknowledges the God-ordained limits of human vision, 
and reverently accepts the everlasting mystery in which 
the Absolute hides itself from finite apprehension, and 
restrains intrusive fingers where it seems to see the 
handwriting of God, w Thus far, and no farther." And, 



432 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



a^ain, there is a seeking after knowledge which looks 
not up, but underneath and behind: which pries and 
peeps and peers ; and. not satisfied with the radiant 
and majestic face of truth, puts forth its impious hand 
to detect the forbidden form. Its desire is not for 
light and manifestation of the Godhead, and heavenly 
guidance; but for penetrating into dark corners, and 
disembowelling sacred mysteries. It is not to face 
instruction, but to go behind it. It tolerates nothing 
hidden, and is for ever peeping beneath the veils which 
the course of revealing Providence has not yet removed ; 
and which science, by legitimate methods, has been un- 
able to lift. For all that is to be known is not yet 
revealed, and not yet revealable. The language of 
God to the human mind is, "I have many things to 
declare unto you ; but ye are not able to bear them yet.' ? 
For every revelation, and for every discovery, there is 
a time : and no real progress is made, or insight gained, 
by empiric groping, where neither revelation points nor 
science leads the way. If it were possible to anticipate 
truth by prurient speculation, it would not be truth in 
effect. For truth is not an entity, but a right relation 
of the mind with the objects presented to it. And that 
cannot be a right relation in which the natural and di- 
vine order is violated. The rash disciple of Egyptian 
mysteries who uncovered the veiled image at Sais, was 
not instructed, but smitten with madness, by what he 
discovered. 

Observe, too, that the Greek propensity in religion, 
so far from securing the inquirer against that excessive 
credulity which might seem to be the peculiar attribute 
of the Jewish mind, is itself especially liable to this 



THE TWO TYPES. 



433 



weakness, and not unfrequently terminates in grosser 
illusions and wilder superstitions than ever authority 
imposed on those whose faith requires a sign. It was 
the Gnostics, among the early Christians, — that specu- 
lating sect for whom Christianity was not sufficiently 
intellectual, and who sought to piece it with their 
philosophy, — it was they who received the spurious 
?f Gospel of the Infancy," with its foolish tales of mira- 
cles wrought by the infant Jesus. Lord Herbert, of 
Cherbury, believed in a special revelation vouchsafed to 
encourage him in a work in which all revelation was 
denied. And, in our day, many who professed philo- 
sophic doubts of Christianity, and could not accept the 
alleged improbabilities of the gospel history, have given 
unhesitating credence to pretended visitations from the 
spirit-world, of which table-tipping and anile gossip 
have as yet been the only fruit. 

The propensity of the Greek mind is to require a 
reason for every truth. And it needs the critical action 
of this propensity to distinguish truth from falsehood 
in the doctrines presented to the mind ; to secure the 
mind from error and superstition, and that unlimited 
credulity which is practically no better than unbelief. 
But let it be remembered that truth is not the product 
of reason ; and that there are truths for which no reason 
can be given, but the reason assigned for .the being of 
God, "I am because I am." This divine because is 
the terminus of human inquiry in religion and philoso- 
phy, beyond which speculation is fruitless, and where 
reverent minds will bow submissive, and inquiry yield 
to faith. 

A mind indulging this bias, and pushing this pro- 

28 



434 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY, 



pensity without heed and without check, will be very 
likely to lose its self-possession, and either to founder 
in the realm of inanities, without bottom and without 
goal; or, what is equally bad, to entangle itself with 
life-long, inexorable bondage. These are the minds that 
riot in ultraisms. The complexion of their ultraisms 
depends on accidental conditions. In one direction 
they become brawling infidels ; men who glory in hav- 
ing no Grod and no hope, no calling but corruption, 
and no destination but the grave. In another direction 
they become vehement schismatics, disorganizes, de- 
structives ; anti-church, anti-state, anti-law ; implacably 
hostile to every thing established, and, above all, to 
established peace and good-will among men : or if, as 
sometimes chances, they land in the Church of Rome, 
they find special satisfaction in all the extreme and 
most offensive features of that religion ; they urge its 
exclusive principles with a rigor which exceeds the con- 
sciousness of native Romanism. They out-fulminate 
the Vatican, and complacently surrender to damnation 
their former acquaintance, and the greater part of man- 
kind. 

Such are the vagaries incident to minds of this class. 
They are liable to either and any extreme of supersti- 
tion or unbelief. Seeking after wisdom is a brave 
pursuit ; but the truest wisdom comes not by the Greek 
method. None so likely to depart from wisdom as he 
who seeks it through the understanding alone. I 
picture to myself the course of such a spirit diverging 
ever farther from the Source of truth, turning from the 
sun in quest of light, and losing itself in endless aber- 
ration. 



THE TWO TYPES. 



435 



The Greek mind inclines to metaphysic subtleties, and 
delights in curious speculations and abstract questions, 
which have no bearing on practical life. It was the 
Greek that introduced those perplexing questions of 
speculative theology, those controversies respecting the 
nature of the Godhead, and the nature of the Word, 
which rent the early Church, and which still divide the 
Christian world. It was the Greek Fathers who first 
mingled metaphysic subtleties with Christian doctrine. 
All those weary disputations — Arian, Homousian, Ho- 
moiousian, Heterusian, Monophysites, Monotheletes — 
which confuse the records of primitive ecclesiastical 
history are of Greek manufacture. And whatsoever 
of scholastic theorizing and metaphysic speculation, 
rationalistic, Calvinistic, transcendental, in later time 
has perplexed the Christian mind, has in it something 
of the old Greek element. 

The Jew and the Greek — both types have existed 
in the Church from the be°innino- and will continue to 
exist. Each has its merits and its dangers : either, 
when exaggerated, is fraught with evil ; the one resulting 
in bigotry and superstition, the other in bleak negation 
or mystic aberration. Unhappily, they are found too 
often disjoined. If we look around on the world of 
our acquaintance, among those whose minds are active 
in religion, we find the Jew and the Greek each 
marked and distinct, — on the one hand, the rigorous 
conservative, the slave of tradition, the stickier for the 
letter, narrow, repulsive, hard ; on the other, the rash 
innovator, the wild theorist, transcendentalist, mystic, 
genial and quick, but loose, uncertain, vague. A true 



436 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



religion unites both elements. The co-action of both 
is required for a healthy spiritual growth. We need 
the Jew; we need the sign, — external, supreme au- 
thority. We need the ultimate appeal of a given 
word to make our Christianity something more than 
a system of philosophy, a human invention, a fabric of 
the brain; to make it a faith, a religion, a certainty, 
a spiritual rock in the flood of thought and the tide of 
time. And we need the Greek ; we need the reflective, 
intellectual element to make religion something more 
than a charnel and a sleep ; to give it a propulsive, and 
quickening influence ; to give us in it and through it an 
abundant entrance into the everlasting ; to make it a 
progress and a life. 

Let each supply w r hat the other lacks. Is your 
religion of the Jewish type, — a religion of authority, 
of rigid literality? Endeavor to enlarge your thought 
and to liberalize your mind by intercourse with minds 
of a different cast ; converse freely with thinkers of 
every name ; make yourself familiar with the literature 
and philosophy of religion beyond the limits of your 
School and Church. Add to conviction, insight ; to 
tradition, reason ; to dogma, charity ; to the letter, life. 
Let ever green nature and loving humanity twine their 
tendrils around the walls of your Zion, and relieve with 
a gracious tolerance the harsh angularity of your creed. 

Are you a Greek in religion, — rationalistic, studious 
of knowledge, addicted to speculation, impatient of 
authority, seeking in the human understanding alone 
the grounds of belief? Consider that if mortal wit 
were equal to all the wants of the soul, and to all the 
problems of spirit and life, no historic dispensation 



THE TWO TYPES. 



437 



would have been vouchsafed ; no church would ever 
have been established in the world. Reason as you 
will, examine, question : but overlook not the necessi- 
ties of human nature ; accept the limits of human in- 
sight, and temper the boldness of speculation with 
reverent regard for the manifest course of Providence 
in the education of the human race, and with something 
of respect for the faith of mankind. 

"The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after 
wisdom ; " but Christianity comprehends and embodies 
both wisdom and sign. Christianity is larger than 
Jewish authority, and deeper than Grecian philosophy; 
and when in its infancy it burst upon the world, it 
swept away both ; it bore down synagogue and academy ; 
it floated Gamaliel and Plato, resolved them into itself, 
and, preserving what truth was in each, reproduced it 
in its own reconciling and transcendent kind. So it 
will do in all time to come with the sects and schools 
that have sprung from its bosom. It will absorb them 
all, — will survive them all. That steady flood will 
swallow up all our creeds, philosophies, organizations, 
reforms, — all our prophecy, all our knowledge ; while, 
forcing its way through the heart of the world, it bears 
humanity on from truth to truth, and from life to life. 



XII. 

THE MORAL IDEAL. 



xn. 



THE MORAL IDEAL. 



Different ages and religions entertain very different 
notions of moral excellence, which they express in the 
models propounded for the admiration and respect of 
mankind. In many of the religions of the world, 
human models have been exalted into objects of wor- 
ship. In the Greek and Roman cult, a considerable 
part of the rites of worship consisted in honors paid to 
deified men. The Herakles who forms so prominent a 
figure in the Greek mythology, is an instance of this 
deification, the prototype of many worthies, — part his- 
toric, part mythic, — whom their virtues raised to the 
company of the gods. The ritual name by which these 
worthies were designated was " hero ; " a term which 
expressed the highest conception then entertained of 
human excellence. 

The Christian Church, in its Roman branch, adopted 
the same practice. What in ancient Rome was Apothe- 
osis, in modern Rome is Canonization. Canonization 
is the declaration of the Church of Rome, by her consti- 
tuted authorities, that a certain individual is a holy 



442 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



person; one who, having passed directly to heaven with- 
out enduring the pairs of purgatory, is to be invoked 
with prayers and honored with appropriate worship. 
The ritual name by which these Christian heroes are 
designated is w saint ; " a name which expresses the high- 
est ecclesiastical conception of human excellence. This 
is the present technical meaning of the term as applied 
to worthies of the Christian Church. The ancient 
apostolic use was different. Wherever the word " saint" 
occurs in the New Testament, it means simply Christian, 
without the attribution of personal merit. And after 
the time of the apostles, for more than a century, 
Christians without discrimination were called " saints. 9 ' 
By that term they were distinguished from Jew and 
Gentile, but not from each other. 

This change in the use of the word is very remark- 
able. It indicates the different view, entertained by 
different periods, of what constitutes holiness. In the 
view of the early Church, holiness resulted from posi- 
tion, — the position given by the Christian calling. In 
the view of the later Church, position results from holi- 
ness. In the former case, Christians were regarded as 
"called" in a special sense. It was not so much their 
own deliberate choice, as it was the special favor of God, 
that had made them Christians, according to the say- 
ing, "le have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." 
Being chosen, called from amid the great mass of the 
profane world, they were a separate and select race : 
"Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy 
nation, a peculiar people." Their separation was their 
sanctity. As the age advanced, and Christendom ex- 
tended its borders ; and Christianity, instead of a spe- 



THE MORAL IDEAL. 



443 



cialty and a separation, became an empire and a world, 

— this view of sanctity got obsolete. Christian and saint 
were no longer synonymous. The idea of holiness was 
then transferred from a providential state to a voluntary 
act, from calling to character, from the lot to the life. 
But still the Church so far maintained the original idea 
as to recognize no holiness outside of the Christian fold. 
And, as being within that fold was purely providential, 

— a matter of nativity or opportunity, — holiness was 
still, in part, external and accidental. Accordingly, 
the saint of the Christian Church represents the two 
elements of fortune and character, — an accidental and 
a moral element : the fortune consisting in the circum- 
stance of Christian nativity or Christian opportunity ; 
the character being his own developed and disciplined 
will. 

Regarding the moral element in the Church idea of 
the saint, we have here a type of character differing 
widely from that represented in the objects of Gentile 
adoration. The deified men of the Gentile Church 
were the strong, the brave, the beautiful, the eminent, 
and such as were distinguished by worldly success. 
The canonized worthies of the Christian Church were 
men and women, distinguished by moral exactness and 
religious devotion. Here, then, we have a point of com- 
parison by which to estimate the different tendencies of 
the Gentile and the Christian mind. Here we have 
their respective ideals of human excellence, the charac- 
ters to which they paid the highest honor, the hero and 
the saint, the powerful and the good. Out of this one 
difference it would not be difficult to develop all the 
moral differences which distinguish the two religions. 



444 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



The hero was the saint of ancient worship, the saint 
is the hero of the Christian Church. And observe that 
the same qualities which the Greeks adored in their 
heroes and demigods were also embodied, and constitu- 
ted the distinguishing traits, in their higher divinities. 
The Olympian gods were deified Force, Beauty, Cun- 
ning, Aft. 

In the city of Borne, in the early period of the Chris- 
tian era, the two religions encountered each other, and 
contended together in a deadly conflict, which resulted in 
the overthrow of the Gentile and the triumph of the 
Christian worship, of the Christian ecclesiastical power, 
also of many Christian ideas, and among them the 
recognition of the Christian type of character. There 
remain, as monuments of this conflict and this triumph, 
some ancient temples, once consecrate to Gentile divini- 
ties, which, after the overthrow of polytheism, were 
purified, re-dedicated, and converted into Christian 
Churches, and which still survive as such. The most 
remarkable of these is the great pantheon of Agrippa, 
a temple erected near the time of the birth of Christ ; 
and dedicated, not to one deity only, but to all the 
divinities of the Greek and Eoman faith. Early in 
the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV. new consecra- 
ted this splendid fane, cleared it of the symbols of poly- 
theism, replaced the ancient statues with representations 
of Christian worthies, and devoted it to the Virgin 
Mary and all the martyrs. It still exists under this 
designation, the most perfect monument which modern 
Rome contains of ancient architectural art. This ven- 
erable temple of two successive ages and religions 
affords, in the contrast of its present symbols, images, 



THE MORAL IDEAL . 



445 



and decorations, with those of ancient time, an apt illus- 
tration of the change which religion has wrought in the 
moral ideals of the people of Rome. A writer * in 
the interest of the Catholic Church, defending it against 
the charge of Paganism, supposes an ancient Roman, 
who had known this temple in his lifetime, to revisit it 
in its present form. K The first thing which would strike 
him, instead of the statue of Jupiter, which once stood 
fronting the entrance, would be the image of Christ 
crucified, which now occupies that spot. On the right 
hand, the picture of one whom men are stoning, while 
he, with uplifted eyes, prays for their forgiveness, would 
rivet his attention ; on the left, the modest statue of a 
virgin with a child in her arms would invite him to in- 
quiry. Then he would see the monuments of men whose 
clasped or crossed hands express how they died with 
unresisting patience, and the prayer of faith in their 
hearts. When he should inquire into the character of 
these men, he would learn that they were not such as had 
been crowned with worldly success, or whose achieve- 
ments had won for them the applause of their contempo- 
raries ; not victors in battle, not rulers and potentates, 
but men whose highest distinction was their humility and 
devotion, — men who were persecuted for righteousness' 
sake ; who resisted not evil, but returned blessings for 
cursing, and submitted themselves to a painful death 
rather than deny their faith." — "I fancy," says this 
writer, " it would be no difficult task, with these objects 
before him, to expound and fully develop to him the 
Christian faith ; and I think this ancient Roman would 



* The late Cardinal Wiseman. 



446 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



get the idea of a religion immensely different from that 
which he had professed, when he should see the substitu- 
tion of symbol for symbol, — the cross of ignominy with 
its unresisting victim for the haughty Thunderer, the 
purest of virgins for the goddess of lust, the forgiving 
Stephen for the avenging god of war. He would con- 
ceive the idea of a religion of the meek and humble, of 
the persecuted and suffering, of the merciful, the modesty 
and devout." 

In this change from the old to the new, from Gentile 
to Christian, the most marked and remarkable and 
indisputable sign of spiritual superiority on the part of 
the Christian is the Precognition, the sublime disregard 
by the Church, of all adventitious, external, splendor 
and renown, of all pomp of circumstance, of all conven- 
tional distinctions of rank or place, of all physical 
endowments, such as beauty or strength, of all celebrity 
won by merely animal or merely secular or intellectual 
prowess or enterprise. The qualifications for ecclesias- 
tical saintship have been precisely those qualities which 
the gospel commends, — humility, meekness, patience. 
The gospel announced itself as a power that was to 
"exalt them of low degree." — "Blessed are the poor in 
spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," " He that 
humbleth himself shall be exalted," is its spirit and 
promise, its all-pervading idea. This idea and promise 
the Church of Rome has strikingly and nobly fulfilled. 
Mistakes she may have made in regard to the claims of 
some whom she canonized ; but one mistake she did not 
commit, from one abuse of power an impartial judgment 
must pronounce her wholly and signally free. In the 
canonization of her worthies there has been no respect 



THE MOEAL IDEAL. 



447 



of persons ; no regard was paid to earthly rank or 
glory, However, in her policy toward the living, she 
may have truckled to rank and power, in the adminis- 
tration of her rites and duties to the dead she has known 
no man according to the flesh, and recognized no claim 
but holiness. There is no aristocracy in the Christian 
calendar but the aristocracy of good works and moral 
desert. There is no Julius there, no Augustus, no 
Antinous, much less a Caligula. If any crowned heads 
are there, they are such as Olaf and Edward, and 
Princess Elizabeth. If any nobles are there, they are 
such as St. Theresa and St. Charles. It is creditable 
to the Church of Eome, that she has canonized very few 
sovereigns, only one or two popes, and those not the 
most distinguished, nor the most devoted champions of 
ecclesiastical power ; — not Hildebrand nor Innocent 
III., although one would say the temptation to canonize 
these must have been very great. On the other hand, 
the Church has freely and gladly exalted them of low 
degree, and raised them to sainted seats, where, after due 
investigation, the claim of holiness could be satisfactorily 
made out." In that calendar there are worthies whom 
some of their votaries would not have deigned to meet, 
while living, on equal terms, — would have deemed it 
beneath their dignity to consort with in the flesh, whose 
contact they would have shunned, to speak affably to 
whom would have seemed condescension, by whose side 
they would not have chosen to sit in public places. 
Servants are there, and beggars are there, and negroes 
are there; and their worshipful and aristocratic con- 
temporaries are not there. The former are honored 
and adored, and invoked with prayer : the latter are 



448 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



forgotten and unknown. In this exaltation of the low, 
and neglect of the mighty, — where lowliness was 
coupled with holiness, and greatness was not, — the 
Church has done nobly, and carried out the idea of 
Christ. For if there is any thing which Christianity 
honors, it is humility; and, if there is any thing which 
God hates, it is exclusiveness and pride. 

Thus much it seemed fitting and right to say in vindi- 
cation and commendation of the ecclesiastical type of 
moral excellence as represented in the calendared saints 
of the Church. But when, from the positive side of this 
type, we turn to the negative, we perceive a certain nar- 
rowness, a one-sidedness, which renders the saint of the 
Church of Rome not altogether satisfactory to the liberal 
and philosophic mind. We are struck with the fact, that 
the heroes of the calendar are all Christians. I use the 
word in the technical sense. Those whom Rome cano- 
nizes must all have been within the pale of the Church ; 
since the rupture of the Eastern and Latin Churches, 
they must all have been within the pale of the Church of 
Rome. Xo outsider, no ancient Gentile, no heathen 
of Christian ages, and, not only so, no Protestant 
Christian, can be in that calendar, — can be a saint, 
however pure and lowly and devout. I should be sorry 
to believe that there are not as many saints, ay, and a 
gnreat manv more, according; to the highest Christian 
standard of excellence, outside of that calendar, than are 
in it, both among the dead and among the living. My 
calendar, were I authorized to frame one, would be a 
great deal larger than that of Rome. Not to speak of 
ancient worthies, of Socrates and Epictetus and Anto- 
ninus, there are numbers in our own age who by every 



THE MORAL IDEAL. 



449 



principle of Christian right should be in it, and are not-, 
men and women among the departed, to whom, were 
it lawful to address supplication to any below the 
Supreme, I would certainly as soon pray as to any 
Augustine or Chrysostom, ay ! or the blessed Virgin 
herself. The Church of Rome could not be expected 
to know of all the holy without her own pale; but some 
she did know, and should have recognized, and would 
have recognized and canonized, had a wise and liberal 
piety guided her decisions ; had she duly considered the 
words of the Master, w Other sheep have I who are not 
of this fold ; " had she not been more influenced by 
ecclesiastical exclusiveness than by all her reverence for 
piety and holiness. Will the Church be more scrupu- 
lous than her Lord? She knew of Gentiles in the old 
world ; she has known of heathen and Jews in the new, 
in whom was the very spirit of goodness and of Christ, 
to whom nothing was wanting but the accident of 
Christian baptism — a mere external, physical experi- 
ence, a material sign — to constitute them as true 
Christians as any within the pale. These are not only 
excluded from the company of saints, but are not 
even salvable according to the Catholic theory of sal- 
vation. 

The Protestant Church, with truer sympathy and 
broader charity, accepts for the most part the recognized 
saints of the Church of Rome, while she wisely refrains 
from establishing any canon for herself of either Catho- 
lic or Protestant worthies. But the private heart has a 
canon of its own, independent of the Church, and need- 
ing no decree of ecclesiastical councils to give it sanc- 
tion. In that rubric of the heart are written many 

29 



450 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY . 



names unknown to Rome and unknown to the world. 
How many men of pure minds and spotless lives, 
whose daily record has been a registry of good deeds, 
and whose course through the world a river of blessing ! 
And, oh ! how many women, self-sacrificing, unpre- 
tending, uncomplaining, whose only art was loving- 
kindness, in whom was no thought that did not turn on 
others' need and others' weal, who have borne with 
patience and unconquerable faith the heavy burden of 
a thankless service and an unblest house, — the very 
incarnation of the charity which "hopeth all things, 
believeth all things, endureth all things" ! Calendar or 
no calendar, our faithful rubric shall recognize these as 
booked and enrolled in that sacred host whose upper 
ranks and whose earthly platoons " but one communion 
make ; " fellows and heirs in the peerage of holiness, 
" partners with the saints in light." Our highest mood 
will gratefully canonize all such, and praise the All- 
giver for that most needful and divinest blessing, good 
men and good women in every-day life, — the saints of 
the workbench, the saints of the office, the saints of the 
kitchen, the saints of the needle, the nursery, and 
the hearth. 

I said that the Roman-Church type of the saint was 
too exclusive on its negative side. I must also add, that 
it seems to me somewhat narrow on the positive ; a 
little too contracted in its moral aspect. Lowliness, 
purity, abstemiousness, devoutness, which constitute the 
chief ingredients in the composition of the calendar 
saint, are priceless qualities, no doubt; still, they are 
not the only virtues, nor the sole conditions of holiness. 
Sincerity, frankness, cordiality, liberality, cheerfulness, 



THE MORAL IDEAL. 



451 



— these also are Christian graces, and essential consti- 
tuents of human excellence. And these are qualities 
which the Church canon makes little account of ; which 
are often wanting, or not apparent, in the Church's 
saints. The consequence is, that the Church's saints, 
save here and there a Francis of Assisi, a Philip Neri, 
and a Francis Sales, are rather objects of reverential 
wonder than of cordial, affectionate sympathy, or enthu- 
siastic emotion. I fancy the image conveyed to most 
minds by the word " saint " is that of a drooping, ema- 
ciated, wobegone figure, of sad countenance, "as the 
hypocrites are," or perhaps of a stern, repulsive look ; 
not that of a healthy, eupeptic, cheerful, humane, and 
genial nature, such as one would choose for companion 
or friend. At best, it is an image of rapt, devout looks, 
"commercing with the skies," as of one who has no 
part or lot in things below. Nor can it be denied, that 
the saints sometimes have been men of narrow minds 
and narrow hearts, of limited views and sympathies ; 
formal, unlovely, severe, — men in whom the religious 
sentiment has had a morbid and unnatural development, 
not carrying the other sentiments along with it, running 
to formalism, not blossoming into a large humanity and 
generous expansion of the heart, but contracting the 
affections, and seeking its food in asceticism instead of 
charity. Such examples have made the saintly char- 
acter suspicious and repulsive to men of the world. 
The world will tolerate faults in its heroes, but not in 
its saints. Or, if there be faults, they must be such as 
spring from over-softness, not from defect of charity. 
No character is more repulsive than that in which reli- 
gion is divorced from humanity. 



452 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



The fact is, there are two quite opposite theories of 
moral excellence : we may term them the humane, and 
the ecclesiastical. The one makes goodness a natural 
growth; the other, an artificial product. The former 
discerns it in a healthy nature healthily developed, 
seconded by divine grace : the latter regards it as the 
substitution, by divine grace, of a theological and eccle- 
siastical conscience in the place of the natural heart. 
In the one view, grace re-enforces nature; in the other, 
it supersedes nature. According to one conception, 
goodness is self-manifestation ; according to the other, it 
is self-alienation, — manifestation of an alien power. 

In the fifth century of the Christian era, the two 
theories, represented respectively by St. Augustine and 
Peiagius, were brought into sharp collision, and debated 
in a council of the Church. The Church decided for 
the Augustinian doctrine ; the humane view was de- 
clared a heresy, and has been out of favor ever since 
with the Orthodox sects. But when, from the bar of 
Orthodoxy, we appeal to the common sense of mankind, 
that judgment is reversed. In the court of common 
sense, true goodness is a natural growth : the more of 
individuality, the more of nature there is in it, the more 
genuine. Unless the original nature and deepest heart 
of the individual are expressed in it, however respect- 
able, and however virtuous in its kind, it is not the 
highest stvle of goodness. It may be a good substitute 
where the genuine article is not vouchsafed, but good 
only as an artificial product is good in the absence of 
the natural. Still the natural is better. AYe rejoice 
when art can in any degree supply or redeem the defi- 
ciency of nature ; but we rather rejoice in nature. A 



THE MORAL IDEAL. 



453 



forced goodness is better than none. Nay, there may 
be even more merit in it than in natural goodness, 
because of the effort it costs. But there is not the 
beauty in it that there is in the natural, and therefore 
not the attractiveness and life-giving power. There is 
all the difference between them that there is in literature 
between a work of genius, the gift of inspiration, and a 
work elaborated by assiduous toil, — the same that 
there was between the two wives of the patriarch Jacob : 
"Leah w T as tender-eyed, but Rachel was beautiful/' 

It is seldom that canonical holiness is found in com- 
bination with an opulent, genial nature ; still less, with 
humor and love of fun. But the possibility of such a 
combination is shown in one remarkable example at 
least, in which the saintly character appears completely 
redeemed from that ghostly unreality which attaches to 
most of its calendared representatives ; an ecclesiastic 
whose goodness was not of the ecclesiastical type, but 
thoroughly and richly humane. St. Philip JvTeri, foun- 
der of the order of the w Oratory," was a man of ex- 
alted piety and boundless beneficence, — a man whose 
lengthened life was a life-long sacrifice, a pouring forth 
of himself in ecstatic devotion Godward, and in cease- 
less charities man ward ; but withal so entirely natural, 
so genial, so sparkling with exuberant mirth, so con- 
stitutionally averse from all cant and pharisaism, 
that he often affronted the traditional standard of 
priestly decorum with his uncanonical deportment, his 
humorous disregard of conventional proprieties. The 
oddest freaks are recorded of him ; and, while he figures 
as a saint in the calendar, he lives as a humorist in popu- 
lar tradition. He encouraged the desponding penitent 



454 



RATIONAL CHRISTIAXITY. 



to confess, by pretending to expect something worse than 
the fact. "Is that a 1 !? Would I had done nothing 
worse ! 99 He hated nothing so much as the reputation 
of a saint. One clay, in the house of the Marchess 
Kangoni, the Spanish ambassadress inquired of him, 
how long he had renounced the world. He replied 
that he was not conscious of having renounced the 
world at all, and soon began to speak of a jest-book in 
his possession, and to recount some of the droll things 
contained in it. 

At the request of his friend. Angelo da Bagnarea, 
he called on a nobleman who had desired his acquaint- 
ance, but who was rather scandalized at his jocose 
manner, and afterward confided to Angelo that he had 
not been much edified by the interview. ^Thereupon 
Angelo requested Philip to repeat the visit, and to put 
on a graver deportment. K What would you have?" 
said the impracticable devotee, "You want me to 
play the serious, that people may say, ' That is Father 
Philip,' and tell fine stories about me. Depend upon 
it 3 if I go again I shall only make matters worse." He 
would never engage in spiritual conversation with dis- 
tinguished strangers, whom curiosity and the reputation 
of his piety attracted to his cell. 

At times a humorous fit would seize him in public, 
and tempt him to practical jokes. Standing, one day, 
in the midst of a crowd at the door of a church, await- 
ing the exhibition of some relics, his eye caught the 
flowing beard of a soldier of the Swiss Guard. Follow- 
ing the impulse of the moment, he grasped it with both 
hands, and began to stroke it with droll caresses, much 
to the amazement and amusement of the bystander?. 



THE MORAL IDEAL. 



455 



He was often known, when walking the streets, to take 
off his spectacles, and put them to the eyes of people 
who passed. He would dance and caper in the public 
squares, and say occasionally to lookers-on, after execut- 
ing some extraordinary feat of agility, f * What do you 
think of that?" He was much delighted on hearing some 
one whisper to his neighbor, "See that crazy old fool ! " 

As an instance of his moral independence and the 
deep sincerity of his nature, it is related, that, when 
the Sacred College with mistaken policy attempted to 
enforce the due observance of the rite of confession, by 
posting the names of delinquents in that kind, Philip 
said, "I will go, and read the list, that I may ascertain 
who are the brave men who will rather incur such 
reproach than dishonor themselves and blaspheme God 
by a hypocritical and forced compliance." 

Xot less entertaining than the pranks recorded of him 
is the effort of Ins ecclesiastical biographers to qualify 
and excuse these evidences of a genuine human nature 
underlying the saintly fame. The Church could not 
choose but canonize, after his death, a man of such tran- 
scendent and well-established sanctity ; but he often 
scandalized the Church, while living, by the freedom of 
his manners. The same fear of scandal is evident in 
most of the memoirs which recount his life. What was 
pure, unadulterated fun they ascribe to excessive humil- 
ity.* So fearful was he of being too highly esteemed 



* It is reckoned as penance and mortification (per mortificarsi) 
by the Italian biographer from whom most of these anecdotes are 
taken. Vita di S. Fiiippo Neri, Fondatore, &c. Scritta dal P. R. Gia- 
como Bacci. Edizione Terza. Roma, 1831. From the Protestant side 
there is an excellent sketch in " Herzog's Real-Encyclopadie." 



456 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



that he was willing to appear w a fool for Christ's sake." 
The "Acta Sanctorum" maintains a prudent reserve 
on the subject; but tradition, and the annals of the 
brotherhood which he established, have transmitted 
the genuine lineaments of one of the truest and noblest 
spirits that have ever sprung from the bosom of the 
Church. 

The world in general cares less for piety than it does 
for force : it demands the strong man rather than the 
good. The types of character known respectively as 
K hero " and K saint 93 represent, not only different sys- 
tems of religion, but different stages of moral culture 
in Christian lands and times. On the ordinary level 
of human experience, the hero is the more popular 
character of the two. With how different a sound 
the two titles strike the common ear ! what different 
feelings they awaken in the breast ! The one attracts 
with magnetic power, — it stirs the blood, it sets the 
whole nature aglow : the other looks pale and cold, 
— it seems something spectral, whose commerce and 
uses are not of this world. The reason is, that the 
former appeals to the animal nature ; the other, to 
the spiritual. The appeal to the spiritual leaves men 
unmoved, because the spiritual is undeveloped. With 
the heroic we can all sympathize : the feelings which it 
touches are common to all. We cannot all sympathize 
with the saint for want of the saintly in ourselves : we 
have not yet attained to apprehend him. The saint will 
be our hero when we reach that plane of moral life on 
which he stands ; and the heroes of our present idolatry 
will then no longer satisfy our more advanced sense of 



THE MORAL IDEAL, 



457 



the true and the good. Y\e outgrow our idols with 

CD O 

growing insight : the models of our childhood are not 
the models of our youth, and the models of our youth 
have ceased to charm our riper years. In literature the 
authors and passages that filled our souls at one period 
leave us unmoved at another. The tumid phrase, the 
stormy sentiment, the coarse ideals, which gratified our 
inexperienced judgment, we now reject ; and have 
learned to prize instead, those calmer, chaster models 
which once repelled. Most men are children in moral 
culture ; their tastes are crude, their judgment green, 
their idols such as fit and please the undeveloped mind, 
— great in their way, eminent in their kind; but that 
way how imperfect, that kind how poor, compared with 
the higher models of the soul ! Advancing culture dis- 
abuses us of our early predilections, exposes the inade- 
quacy of our early ideals, strips our idols of their 
fancied perfections, and tears them to pieces before our 
eyes. We outgrow the pagan in our experience : Her- 
cules gives way to Christ, 

The world's heroes are not unworthy the homage 
they receive on their own plane. Whatever savors of 
heroism is worthy of honor. All great and shining 
qualities, strength, valor, genius, — who can help 
admiring these ! I rejoice that such things are ; I re- 
joice that there is a power in man to appreciate such. 
Still, there is something greater than these ; they do not 
exhaust the power that is in man. The piety which 
dwells in the heights of the soul, which walks and works 
with God in godlike beneficence, is more sublime than 
the valor which breasts the shock of armies, than the 
genius which walks in glory among the stars. 



458 



RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



There are two things which all men reverence who 
are capable of reverence, — strictly speaking, only two. 
The one is Beauty ; the other, Power. Whatever is 
worshipped and loved in this world is comprised under 
these two heads. Oar idea of God and all possible 
excellence is resolvable into these. Power and Beauty, 
— man is so constituted that he must reverence these 
so far and so fast as he can apprehend them. And so 
far and so fast as human culture advances, men w r ill see 
that Holiness is Beauty ; and Goodness, Power. 



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